RE: Where is the First> Last> convention documented?

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Sep 13 2007 - 16:23:02 CDT

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    Kenneth Whistler [mailto:kenw@sybase.com] wrote:
     
    > Some were, and some were not. The IBM EBCDIC control functions
    > differ significantly from the ISO 6429 C0 and C1 controls.
    > See, for example:
    >
    > http://www.barrcentral.com/help/spool/B_ASCII_and_EBCDIC_Standards.htm

    I don't take this as a reference for EBCDIC. The mappings betweenEBCDIC and
    ISO 8859-1 were published since long by IBM and prevail. I have never seen
    the differences you expose here (possibly a fantasy from the author of this
    site, due to some specific use in some old IBM-specific application, and
    assumption that the use in such application was changing the mapping.) May
    be the mapping between the two was not clear for many years, but this has
    stabilized since long now (the remaining differences are
    application-specific but no more supported at the system level as they are
    not interoperable, meaning that those EBCDIC applications may need specific
    conversion filters if there are remaining differences, or may need to filter
    out some unneeded data by substituting spaces for example, or removing those
    characters and using padding).

    Infact there are more modern ways to use data containing those control
    codes, as most of them came from legacy file formats on punching cards;
    today filesystems, even with EBCDIC, use more advance technics and no longer
    need punching cards for storage and input.

    Except possibly in some old specific systems used by armies, that have not
    changed since decennials due to lack of investment for extending their
    interoperability, like those systems still used by NATO in Turkey and
    exchanging data with other NATO centers in Europe (possibly elsewhere too)
    on stacks of punched cards or on old harddisk-packs transmitted by air mail,
    rather than through electronic networks (I don't know if they are still used
    today, but they were still used in 1989 and still used massively during the
    1st War of Gulf and the Desert Storm operation when electronic networks were
    considered too much insecure to coordinate the operations of the different
    involved armies, notably for managing the hardware, arms, material being
    repaired...)



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