Xref: utzoo comp.unix.misc:428 comp.lang.c:33177 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!goanna!ok From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.lang.c Subject: Re: EBCDIC <--> ASCII conversion Message-ID: <4089@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> Date: 26 Oct 90 02:35:50 GMT References: <1756@dinl.mmc.UUCP> <661@modus.sublink.ORG> <831@compnect.UUCP> <1990Oct25.140442@devils.rice.edu> Followup-To: comp.unix.misc Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 24 In article <1990Oct25.140442@devils.rice.edu>, schafer@devils.rice.edu (Richard A. Schafer) writes: > In article , meissner@osf.org > (Michael Meissner) writes: > ||> However, unlike say ISO646 or ASCII, there is no one standard > EBCDIC. > To be fair, there is no *one* standard ASCII, either There is one and only one ASCII (well, there was an old version, but there has been only one for many years). ASCII stands for *AMERICAN* Standard Code for Information Interchange. ASCII is one particular natiaonal variant of the ISO 646 standard. The European versions of ISO 646 aren't versions of ASCII. The new standard (ISO 8859) is a family of 8-bit codes. Every member of the family has the same graphic characters in the lower half (32..126) as ASCII; this is a compatible extension of ISO 646. If you want to draw a parallel between ISO 646 and EBCDIC, there are *lots* of versions of EBCDIC. There's a French one and a Spanish one and a Hebrew one and ... Undeniably commendable. The thing that people complain about is having several incompatible versions within the same "locale" (to use an ANSI-C-ism). -- Fear most of all to be in error. -- Kierkegaard, quoting Socrates.