Hello peter_jacobi.rm,

Tuesday, August 12, 2003, 4:32:25 PM, you wrote:

SQL>> create table temp (col char(8) character set DOS437);
SQL>> insert into temp values (_DOS437'ÄÖÜäöüß');
SQL>> insert into temp values (_DOS437'ABCDEF');
SQL>> select col, cast (col as char(8) character set OCTETS) from temp;

pr> COL CAST
pr> ======== ================
pr> ÄÖÜäöüß FFFFFFFFFFFFFF20
pr> ABCDEF 4142434445462020

pr> Questions:
pr> 1) The useful magic of displaying character set OCTETS
pr> in hexadecimal, is this done by ISQL or in the server?

ISQL. Plain C-API returns bytes as is.

pr> 2) All bytes >> 0x7F are displayed as 0xFF - is there a hidden
pr> reason? Otherwise I'd tempted to file a bug report on this as
pr> it is somewhat unpractical.

Probably a signed/unsigned char issue in ISQL treating each
value > 127 as a negative and then defaulting to -1 (FF).
Should check the source code of isql to verify this before bug report.

--
Best regards,
Olivier Mascia