Converting any file from one code page to another

The easiest way on z/OS to convert a file from one code page to another is to use the standard unix iconv utility.

The sample below is using a traditional batch job, but you can see it can just as easily be run from a shell environment or a shell script.

//STEP1    EXEC PGM=BPXBATCH                                   
//STDERR   DD SYSOUT=*                                         
//STDPARM  DD   *                                              
SH  iconv -f UTF-8 -t IBM-1140 inputfile.utf8 outputfile.ebcdic                
/*                                                             
//      ebcdic - Windows                                                       
SH  iconv -f IBM-1140 -t IBM-1252 inputfile.ebcdic outputfile.ibm1252            
//      Windows - ebcdic                                                        
SH  iconv -f IBM-1252 -t IBM-1140 inputfile.ibm1252 outputfile.ibm1140           
//      ebcdic - utf8                                                       
SH  iconv -f IBM-1140 -t UTF-8 inputfile.ebcdic outputfile.utf8                
//

WTO directly from Rexx

There are probably more ways do write a message in the system log – “Write to Operator” (WTO) from a Rexx script.

This is a very straightforward one I found some time ago somewhere on the Interweb.

/* rexx */                                           
trace r                                              
call syscalls 'ON'                                   
address syscall                                      
path='/dev/console'                                  
'open' path O_wronly 666                             
if retval=-1 then                                    
do                                                    
say 'file not opened, error codes' errno errnojr     
return                                               
end                                                  
fd=retval                                            
rec= 'This is my message text to appear in the system log.' || esc_n                            
'write' fd 'rec' length(rec)                         
if retval=-1 then                                    
say 'record not written, error codes' errno errnojr  
'close' fd

Have more solutions? Or remarks? Please let me know below.