SAS Companion for the OS/390 Environment

Considerations for Using Formats in the OS/390 Environment

EBCDIC and Character Data

The following character formats produce different results on different computing platforms, depending on which character-encoding system the platform uses. Because OS/390 uses the EBCDIC character-encoding system, all of the following formats convert data from EBCDIC.

These formats are not discussed in detail in this chapter because the EBCDIC character-encoding system is their only host-specific aspect.

$ASCIIw.: converts EBCDIC character data to ASCII character data.
$BINARYw.: converts EBCDIC character data to binary representation, where each character is represented by eight binary characters.
$EBCDICw.: converts EBCDIC data to character data. Under OS/390, $EBCDICw. and $CHARw. are equivalent.
$HEXw.: converts EBCDIC character data to hexadecimal representation.
$OCTALw.: converts EBCDIC character data to octal representation.

All the information that you need in order to use these formats under OS/390 is in SAS Language Reference: Dictionary.

Floating-Point Number Format and Portability

The manner in which OS/390 stores floating-point numbers can affect your data. See Representation of Floating-Point Numbers for details.

Writing Binary Data

If a SAS program that writes binary data is run in only one operating environment, you can use the following native-mode formats:(footnote 1)

IBw.d: writes integer binary (fixed-point) values, including negative values, that are represented in two's complement notation.
PDw.d: writes data that are stored in IBM packed decimal format.
PIBw.d: writes positive integer binary (fixed-point) values.
RBw.d: writes real binary (floating-point) data.

If you want to write SAS programs that can be run on multiple machines that use different byte-storage systems, use the following IBM 370 formats:

S370FFw.d: is used on other computer systems to read EBCDIC data from IBM mainframe files.
S370FIBw.d: writes integer binary data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FIBUw.d: writes unsigned integer binary data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FPDw.d: writes packed decimal data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FPDUw.d: writes unsigned packed decimal data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FPIBw.d: writes positive integer binary data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FRBw.d: writes real binary data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FZDw.d: writes zoned decimal data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FZDLw.d: writes zoned decimal leading sign data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FZDSw.d: writes zoned decimal separate leading sign data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FZDTw.d: writes zoned decimal separate trailing sign data in IBM mainframe format.
S370FZDUw.d: writes unsigned zoned decimal data in IBM mainframe format.

These IBM 370 formats enable you to write SAS programs that can be run in any SAS environment, regardless of the standard for storing numeric data. They also enhance your ability to port raw data between host operating environments.

For more information about the IBM 370 formats, see SAS Language Reference: Dictionary.

FOOTNOTE 1: Native-mode formats use the byte-ordering system that is standard for the operating environment.

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