convert EBCDIC String to ASCII format?

Question

I am having a flat file which is pulled from a Db2 table ,the flat file contains records in both the char format as well as packed decimal format.how to convert the packed data to a java string.is there any way to convert the entire flat file to ASCII format.

Catchup

Answer 1

EBCDIC is a family of encodings. You'll need to know more in details which EBCDIC encoding you're after.

Java has a number of supported encodings, including:

• IBM500/Cp500 - EBCDIC 500V1
• x-IBM834/Cp834 - IBM EBCDIC DBCS-only Korean (double-byte)
• IBM1047/Cp1047 - Latin-1 character set for EBCDIC hosts

Try those and see what you get. Something like:

InputStreamReader rdr = new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(<your file>), java.nio.Charset.forName("ibm500"));
    while((String line = rdr.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
}

Foredoom

It should be noted that this list is of the encodings supported by the Oracle JDK. The list of encodings required to be supported by all JVMs is much shorter. – Thracian

Answer 2

Read the file as a String, write it as EBCDIC. Use the OutputStreamWriter and InputStreamWriter and give the encoding in the constructor.

Ossification

Answer 3

Following from PAP, CP037 is US EBCDIC encoding.

Also have a look at JRecord Project. It allows you to read a file with either a Cobol or Xml description and will handle EBCDIC and Comp-3.

Finally here is a routine to convert packed decimal bytes to String see method getMainframePackedDecimal in Conversion

Aoudad

Answer 4

Sharing a sample code by me for your reference:

    package mypackage;
    import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
    import java.math.BigInteger;
    public class EtoA {

public static void main(String[] args) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {

    System.out.println("########");
    String edata = "/ÂÄÀ"; //Some EBCDIC string ==> here the OP can provide the content of flat file which the OP pulled from DB2 table 
    System.out.println("ebcdic source to ascii:");
    System.out.println("ebcdic: " + edata);
    String ebcdic_encoding = "IBM-1047"; //Setting the encoding in which the source was encoded
    byte[] result = edata.getBytes(ebcdic_encoding); //Getting the raw bytes of the EBCDIC string by mentioning its encoding
    String output = asHex(result); //Converting the raw bytes into hexadecimal format
    byte[] b = new BigInteger(output, 16).toByteArray(); //Now its easy to convert it into another byte array (mentioning that this is of base16 since it is hexadecimal)
    String ascii = new String(b, "ISO-8859-1"); //Now convert the modified byte array to normal ASCII string using its encoding "ISO-8859-1"
    System.out.println("ascii: " + ascii); //This is the ASCII string which we can use universally in JAVA or wherever 

    //Inter conversions of similar type (ASCII to EBCDIC) are given below:
    System.out.println("########");
    String adata = "abcd";
    System.out.println("ascii source to ebcdic:");
    System.out.println("ascii: " + adata);
    String ascii_encoding = "ISO-8859-1";
    byte[] res = adata.getBytes(ascii_encoding);
    String out = asHex(res);
    byte[] bytebuff = new BigInteger(out, 16).toByteArray();
    String ebcdic = new String(bytebuff, "IBM-1047");
    System.out.println("ebcdic: " + ebcdic);

    //Converting from hexadecimal string to EBCDIC if needed
    System.out.println("########");
    System.out.println("hexcode to ebcdic");
    String hexinput = "81828384"; //Hexadecimal which we are converting to EBCDIC
    System.out.println("hexinput: " + hexinput);
    byte[] buffer = new BigInteger(hexinput, 16).toByteArray();
    String eout = new String(buffer, "IBM-1047");
    System.out.println("ebcdic out:" + eout);

    //Converting from hexadecimal string to ASCII if needed
    System.out.println("########");
    System.out.println("hexcode to ascii");
    String hexin = "61626364";
    System.out.println("hexin: " + hexin);
    byte[] buff = new BigInteger(hexin, 16).toByteArray();
    String asciiout = new String(buff, "ISO-8859-1");
    System.out.println("ascii out:" + asciiout);
}

//This asHex method converts the given byte array to a String of Hexadecimal equivalent
public static String asHex(byte[] buf) {
    char[] HEX_CHARS = "0123456789abcdef".toCharArray();
    char[] chars = new char[2 * buf.length];
    for (int i = 0; i < buf.length; ++i) {
        chars[2 * i] = HEX_CHARS[(buf[i] & 0xF0) >>> 4];
        chars[2 * i + 1] = HEX_CHARS[buf[i] & 0x0F];
    }
    return new String(chars);
}
}

Requital

I think it would be more helpful for the OP and further visitors, when you add some explaination to your intension. – Unseasonable