Transcoding is the
process of converting data from one encoding to another. Transcoding
is necessary when the SAS session encoding and the encoding of the
data are different. Transcoding is often necessary when you move data
between operating environments that use different locales and encoding.
For example, consider
a file that was created under a UNIX operating environment that uses
the Latin1 encoding, then moved to an IBM mainframe that uses the
German EBCDIC encoding. When the file is processed on the IBM mainframe,
the data is remapped from the Latin1 encoding to the German EBCDIC
encoding. If the data contains an uppercase letter Ä, the hexadecimal
number is converted from C4 to 4A.
Transcoding does not
translate between languages; transcoding remaps characters.
In order to dynamically
transcode data between operating environments that use different encodings,
an explicit encoding value must be specified. For details, see
Encoding Values in SAS Language Elements.