help converting EBCDIC to ASCII

[optimomojo]

000

[Clark Addison]

I don't have an answer, but it has been 10 years since I have had to say "EBCIDIC" out loud, and I was happy that I still remember how.

Good luck!

[Uncle Ted]

I need some help converting EBCDIC files to ASCII (csv or Excel format) files for work. I have a file conversion tool, but need some one with some experience to give me some one on one guidance. Please boardmail if you think you can help me out. Thanks.

There is an old UNIX command called 'dd' I used to use to do this a very long time ago... It still ships with Mac OS X.

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man1/dd.1.html

Note the 'conv=' option. You would do something like:

% dd if=ebcdic_file of=ascii_file conv=ascii

on the command line.

Stupid IBM and their "standards".

[Scott R Nelson]

I have a file conversion tool, but need some one with some experience to give me some one on one guidance.

Why don't you just try it out and see what happens?

Surely the program generates new files for the converted ones. If not, copy them all first, then work on the copies. You should be able to peek into the new files and see if they look correct or not.

So what kind of files are they? Cobol programs?

[mtnbiker]

You could always try using JEdit, if you don't like any of the other tools suggested here. It's a free java-based editor that you can download from jedit.org. You can open a file assuming a particular encoding, or just let it auto-detect, then have it modify the encoding in its edit buffer, and save the file out with a new name. I've used it before to convert between different file formats, and it worked fine. Here are a couple of screenshots.

Open the file based and assume a particular encoding:


Modify the encoding in the buffer: