EFT Support for EBCDIC

Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) is an 8-bit character encoding used on IBM mainframe operating systems such as z/OS, OS/390, VM and VSE, IBM midrange computer operating systems such as OS/400 and i5/OS, and on various non-IBM platforms such as Fujitsu-Siemens' BS2000/OSD, HP MPE/iX, and Unisys MCP.

EFT complies with TYPE E (EBCDIC) mode for FTP-based file transfers (in server mode):

  • When a client or mainframe uploads a file over FTP/S and requests TYPE E, EFT converts the file to ASCII (native Windows format).

  • When a client or mainframe downloads a file and requests TYPE E, EFT converts the file into EBCDIC format and sends it to the requesting client.

EFT supports conversion of ASCII to EBCDIC and vice versa. Unfortunately, there are several “standard” mappings and EFT currently supports only one of them, the one recommended by Microsoft and IBM.

The table linked below is an ASCII-to-EBCDIC conversion table that translates 7-bit ASCII characters to 8-bit EBCDIC characters. This translation is not bidirectional. Some EBCDIC characters cannot be translated to ASCII and some conversion irregularities exist in the table.

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/iis/11.3?topic=tables-ascii-ebcdic

NOTE: EFT does not support the HP standard (used by the dd tool in Linux).