3.1 Warning

Signed an binary data are hardly bound with the operating system and the hardware running TXT2XML. On a PC, binary (and not numeric and packed-decimal) data is stored in little endian mode. It means that the low-order byte of the number is stored in memory at the lowest address, and the high-order byte at the highest address. On a IBM MVS mainframe, binary data are stored in the opposite mode : big endian. For example :

Hexadecimal data

Little endian (PC)

Big endian (MVS) x'01 02 03 04'

Conclusion

: although TXT2XML runs on multiple platforms, you should always run TXT2XML on the platform where you will use the binary and/or signed converted data.

So, forget the idea to run TXT2XML on one platform (i.e a PC running Windows) and to transfer the converted file on another platform (i.e. an IBM mainframe). File transfer means code page (character set) translation which binary, packed-decimal and even numeric data don't support. Don't try also to convert a pure EBCDIC file on a non-mainframe platform : TXT2XML will never find the XML element delimiters '<', '/' and '>' or the COBOL equivalent of an XML element. In all cases, conversion will stop with an error message.