Definition of isprint()

[Henry Spencer]

In article <474 at sdrc.UUCP> scjones at sdrc.UUCP (Larry Jones) writes:
>We're using SAS C on an IBM mainframe and just ran into an
>interesting problem.  SAS has defined "printing character" in
>terms of what is printable on an ancient line printer so some
>obviously printable characters such as "{", "}", "[", "]", "\",
>and "!" cause isprint() to return 0!

One should remember that on an IBM system speaking EBCDIC, there *is*
no firm definition of which characters print and which don't, or what
they print as when they print, because there *is* no single character
code named "EBCDIC".  EBCDIC is a large family of different, often
incompatible, character codes.  Some EBCDICs, e.g. the one on the IBM
360/370 summary card (at least, on my old copy of it), do not have some
of those characters at all.  "!" seems a curious omission, but the
location and presence of the other characters you mention are highly
variable in EBCDIC.
-- 
"God willing, we will return." |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
-Eugene Cernan, the Moon, 1972 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu