Double-Byte Character Sets (DBCS)

Overview to Double-Byte Character Sets (DBCS)

Because East Asian languages have thousands of characters, double (two) bytes of information are needed to represent each character.

Each East Asian language usually has more than one DBCS encoding system, due to nonstandardization among computer manufacturers. SAS processes the DBCS encoding information that is unique to each manufacturer for the major East Asian languages.

With the proper software extensions, you can use SAS for the following functions:

display any of the major East Asian languages in the DBCS version of the SAS System
import data from East Asian language computers and move the data from one application or operating environment to another (which might require SAS ACCESS or other SAS products)
convert standard East Asian date and time notation to SAS date values, SAS time values, and SAS datetime values
create data sets and various types of output (such as reports and graphs) that contain East Asian language characters.

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