Mainframe to linux file transfer issue for special character

maheshshinde1987 · May 21, 2020, 10:49am

When I transfer mainframe file into linux environment using FTP.
special character { is getting translate into space.

File contents getting managed if we transfer file from mainframe to windows if we use below
codepage conversion it works for windows.
quote site sbdatacon=(ibm-237,iso8859-1)

Can anyone help me how it can be done for linux.

Neo · May 21, 2020, 11:56am

Did you try setting the transfer mode to binary and not text?

maheshshinde1987 · May 21, 2020, 12:40pm

After using binary mode, I can not even read single character.

EyeOfSauron · May 21, 2020, 1:10pm

Given the fact that a binary transfer is a byte-to-byte (exact) file transfer, what does that mean on your mainframe side?

vgersh99 · May 21, 2020, 2:27pm

Just in case you're dealing with the EBCDIC from IBM... after the binary ftp transfer, try to convert the transferred file to ASCII:

dd if=your-ebcdic-file conv=ascii

maheshshinde1987 · May 21, 2020, 2:38pm

Step 1 > Transfer ebcidic file from mainframe to linux as binary

Step 2 > Converting binary file to ascii (Please share command)

Neo · May 21, 2020, 2:52pm

Converting back from the mainframe to linux you can look at this construct:

iconv -f IBM037 -t utf-8 input_ebcdic.txt -o output.txt

vgersh99 · May 21, 2020, 3:04pm

Haven't we already "shared" the command?
There're plenty of discussions on the subject that Google comes with - one of which is this - you might not even need dd/iconv as a separate step - it seems that some FTP servers on the mainframe side provide the conversation ability OOTB.