Multiple choice technology mainframe

If a data set with text information is created using ISPF edit, the dataset is copied to magnetic tape, and the magnetic tape is then copied to a PC (e.g. Windows), what will a user see who displays the file on the PC?

  1. Clear text, but with punctuation corrupted

  2. The exact same text as seen in ISPF on the mainframe

  3. An odd mixture of unintelligible and unprintable characters

  4. The results of the encryption used in every mainframe data set
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

Mainframes natively encode character data using EBCDIC, whereas modern PCs utilize ASCII or Unicode. Copying raw EBCDIC text files directly to a PC without character set conversion makes the bytes map to incorrect ASCII symbols, resulting in unprintable and unintelligible characters.

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