Name: pa48320 Date: 08/10/99



docs/guide/intl/encoding.doc.html (for 1.1.7 and 1.2.2)
says Cp1046 is "IBM Open Edition US EBCDIC"
Cp1046 is supposed to be an Arabic code page;
see http://www.austin.ibm.com/doc_link/en_US/a_doc_lib/aixkybd/kybdtech/Arabic2.htm
Cp1047 is supposed to be IBM US EBCDIC;
see http://www.s390.ibm.com/products/oe/bpxqs11.html
Cp500 does appear to be an EBCDIC encoding, but
I don't know if it matches IBM US EBCDIC.
Running the following program shows
Cp1046 does not yield the expected EBCDIC
encoding of the byte sequence
0X81, 0X91, 0XA2, 0XC1, 0XD1, 0XE2. Cp1047
is not a valid encoding name, and Cp500 and Cp037
do encode EBCDIC bytes.

Run with:
java encoding Cp1046 Cp1047 Cp037

public class ebcdic {
    static String expected = "ajsAJS";
    public static void main(String argv[])
    {
        byte bytes[] = new byte[] {
            (byte) 0x81, // 'a'
            (byte) 0x91, // 'j'
            (byte) 0xa2, // 's'
            (byte) 0xc1, // 'A'
            (byte) 0xD1, // 'J'
            (byte) 0xE2, // 'S'
        };
        for (int i = 0; i < argv.length; i++)
            display(bytes, argv[i]);
    }
    static void display(byte bytes[], String encoding)
    {
        try {
            System.out.println("Encoding: " + encoding);
            String actual = new String(bytes, encoding);
            System.out.println(actual);
            for (int i = 0; i < expected.length(); i++)
            {
                int e = expected.charAt(i);
                int a = actual.charAt(i);
                System.out.print("At char " + i +
                                 ", expect '" + e +
                                 "', found '" + a + "'");
                if (e != a)
                    System.out.println(" -- Difference!");
                else
                    System.out.println();
            }
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            System.out.println("No such encoding: " + encoding);
        }
    }
}


Getting these names correct is important when a Java
program is communicating with a remote system which
is running EBCDIC... when a handshake occurs and the
remote machine running Cp1047 should be able to
pass the code page Cp1047 back to the Java program,
not mask the tru code page with a replacement like
Cp037 or Cp500

It is not clear if the I18N guide is in error
(Review ID: 93744)
======================================================================