<character, standard> /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ (EBCDIC) An alleged character set used on IBM dinosaurs. It exists in at least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of serveral punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer languages. IBM adapted EBCDIC from punched card code early in the 1960s and promulgated it as a customer control tactic (see connector conspiracy).
In one variant each character is represented by 5 bits and one code (11111?) switches between character sets.
US EBCDIC used more or less the same characters as ASCII, but used different code points. Some ASCII characters did not exist in EBCDIC (e.g. square brackets) and EBCDIC had some (cent sign, not sign) that were not in ASCII. As a consequence, the translation between ASCII and EBCDIC was strictly speaking undefined, and IBM never officially defined a complete one. Users defined one translation which resulted in a so-called de-facto EBCDIC containing all the characters of ASCII, that all ASCII-related programs use.
Some printers, telex machines, and even electronic shop tills can speak EBCDIC, but only so they can converse with IBM mainframes.
For an in-depth discussion of character code sets, and full translation tables, see Guidelines on 8 bit character codes.
Here is a simple translation table:
Least significant nibble ->
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0 ... controls ...
1
2
3 ... controls ...
4 � � � á � � � � � . < ( + |
5 & � � � � � � � � � ! $ * ) ; ^
6 - / � � � � � � � � � , % _ > ?
7 � � � � � � � � � ` : # @ ' = "
8 � a b c d e f g h i � � � � � �
9 � j k l m n o p q r � � � � � �
A � ~ s t u v w x y z � � � [ � �
B � � � � � � � � � � � � � ] � �
C { A B C D E F G H I � � � � ó �
D } J K L M N O P Q R � � � � � �
E \ � S T U V W X Y Z � � � � � �
F 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 � � � � �E.g. the EBCDIC code for "A" is hexadecimal "C1".
(10 Nov 1995)