IBM Mainframe Forum

[zatlas1]

Hi all
I am compiling C (not C++) source code that contains ^ and ^=. The compiler does not like it and complains about it:

ERROR CBC3191 ZATLAS1.PCRE.SRCE(COMPILE8):1135 The character \xb0 is not a valid C source character.

I turned on the DIGRAPH option and used xor_eq which the compiler did not like either (besides this is only for C++). Could somebody please guide me on what should I do in prder to be able to use the legitimate operators ^ and ^= or alternatively, how to corretly use the digraphs in question

Thank you
ZA

[Robert Sample]

This could be a code page issue -- which code page are you editing in, and which code page does the C compiler use?

[zatlas1]

I am not sure exactly what code page is in the z/OS installation, however ^ (which is xor) should be EBCDIC x'b0' in code page 037. OTH, in 1047 it should be x'5F'... mmm, I will try to change the x'b0' to x'5f' and see what will happen. Will report tonight
Thanks
ZA

[zatlas1]

Thank you.
Well, changing x'b0' to x'5f' did the trick although it looks like the codepage setup in wc3270 seems to be set correctly. I would assume that there is some compile option to deal with that. How do I tell the compiler which codepage to use?

ZA

[Robert Sample]

Look at the LOCALE compiler option in the manual -- which you should have looked at first.

[zatlas1]

I did not touch the thing for almost 20 years and at that time nobody really used USS, POSIX, etc. so I actually appreciate the fact that I, sorta, know what I am doing Please don't be that hard on me.
How do I find what codepage does my installation use (as a lowly consultant, the high priests of the system will walk through me as I was made of thin air
Which LOCALE should I use if the compiler with 'NOLOCALE' does not like the x'b0' but works fine with x'f5'?
Thanks
ZA

[steve-myers]

One problem is most terminal emulators treat the ASCII ^ character as the EBCDIC ¬ character, which is in the same place on most real 3270 keyboards.

It seems to me no one bothered to look up the correct trigraph for the ^ character, which is ??', and is documented in XL C/C++ Language Reference for your z/OS release.

FWIW, I started this post with absolutely no knowledge what the trigraph was. I had to find it myself. It took me all of 5 minutes.

One problem I did have with this post was inserting the ¬ character into the post. The ¬ character is not on most PC type keyboards. I eventually got it by creating a text file on a mainframe with the ¬ character, and downloaded it as text data using the 3270 file transfer process. This translated the EBCDIC ¬ to the most common ASCII representation of the ¬ character, which I then copied and pasted into this post.

[zatlas1]

I knew about digraphs but forgot about trigraphs. Thank you for the information.
I will offer several solutions and using the specific trigraph would be one of them.
ZA