Encoding establishes the default working environment
for your SAS session. For example, the Windows Latin1 encoding is
the default encoding for a SAS session under Windows in a Western
European locale such as the de_DE locale for German in Germany. For
example, the Windows Latin1 code point for the uppercase letter Ä
is C4 hexadecimal.
Note: The default encoding varies
according to the operating environment and the locale.
However, if
you are working in an international environment (for example, you
access SAS data that is encoded in German EBCDIC), the German EBCDIC
code point for the uppercase letter Ä is 4A hexadecimal. In order
for a version of SAS that normally uses Windows Latin1 to properly
interpret a data set that is encoded in German EBCDIC, the data must
be transcoded. Transcoding is
the process of converting data from one encoding to another. When
SAS transcodes the Windows Latin1 uppercase letter Ä to the German
EBCDIC uppercase letter Ä, the hexadecimal representation for
the character is converted from the value C4 to a 4A. For conceptual
information, see
Transcoding for NLS.