Editor in hexadecimal dump mode with EBCDIC interpretation

[FALLAI-Denis]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Editing of mvs data sets, or uss files, which are not "plain text" (binary data, packed decimal, etc.).

Describe the solution you'd like

In addition to request #1589, Not all mvs data sets necessarily use the same ccsid, I suggest that Zowe Explorer provide a specialized editor that would display a file in "hex dump" mode rather than "text" mode, after having transferred the file without conversion from the z/OS server ; transfer in "record mode" (not binary), to preserve the end of lines.

Like the Microsoft Hex Editor extension, this editor would display the hexadecimal values of the bytes of the file, and an interpretation as characters, but with an EBCDIC ccsid, either the ccsid declared in the Zowe CLI profile, or a ccsid chosen by the user.

This editor could also use the usual presentation of the ISPF/PDF editor in "hex" mode: presentation of records in hexadecimal mode with interpretation of the character above.

This editor would be automatically opened after a transfer without conversion, (ccsid=0).

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[giteeup12]

Hi - is there any update to this? I am having the same issue transferring mainframe source (which contains embedded hex ) to Git

[RichardSGFR]

Hello, we have the same needs in our company. It would be usefull to be able when browsing or editing a dataset to be able to view/edit the hex value of each characters with the hex value being the hex value on the mainframe and not after conversion to ASCII.

this would ease updating COMP value which are not readable in decimal.

[giteeup12]

Yes, it would be helpful if git displayed hexadecimal values.

[giteeup12]

We also have other hex/binary values in files. Could a feature be added to dispplay that information in Git?

[FALLAI-Denis]

We also have other hex/binary values in files. Could a feature be added to dispplay that information in Git?

Hi,

Zowe Explorer is not designed to deal with Git repositories but to deal with MVS data sets and USS files, and view / edit them locally in VS Code (or equivalent).

If you need to manage hex values in file with Git, you need to declare them in .gitattributes as binary file to avoid conversion.

If you have source code file with hex values, (COBOL, Assembler, ISPF panels...), you must escape hex values to convert them to displayable and convertible characters from EBCDIC to ASCII / UTF8 and vice versa.

The tool to manage files in Git repositories can be IBM Z Open Editor, see IBM/zopeneditor-about#183.

[giteeup12]

Thanks. Does COBOL have escape characters?

[FALLAI-Denis]

Thanks. Does COBOL have escape characters?

Yes, use x'hh' for hexadecimal characters: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/6.4?topic=literals-hexadecimal-notation-alphanumeric

Can also use "symbolic characters": https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/6.4?topic=section-symbolic-characters-clause

[FALLAI-Denis]

Hi,

For information, an alternative to Zowe Explorer for interpreting EBCDIC files is offered by the extension File Editor Extension for z/OS.