System Functions

Format

Description

ASCII

or ANSI

Normal 8-bit data in ASCII format. The exact character set is based on the operating system currently in use. For most systems, this is ANSI (code table 1252 on Windows); however, when DBCS is enabled, use of ASCII will mean the current default character set.

BASE64

or BASE64URL

or BASE64ANY

The MIME e-mail format BASE64 is a binary to text encoding scheme whereby an arbitrary sequence of bytes is converted to a sequence of printable ASCII characters. The only characters used are the uppercase and lowercase alphabetic characters (A - Z, a - z), the numerals (0 - 9), and the "+" and "/" symbols, with the "=" symbol is a special suffix code.

(BASE64URL is an industry recognized variant on BASE64 where the + and / characters are replaced with - and _ respectively). The BASE64ANY should only be used as an input specifier and will allow the system to accept either BASE64 or BASE64URL formatted data. If used on output, standard BASE64 is assumed.

Full specifications for base64 are contained in RFC 1421 and RFC 2045.

CODEnnnn

8-bit data represented by the industry assigned code page number nnnn. The following codesets are supported on all platforms: (as of PxPlus v8.11, build 9182) 

Additional codepage are available on Windows and can be added to UNIX/Linux systems by creating conversion tables in the *plus/codepage directory.

HSL

When specified for the INPUT format, tries to convert input as three numeric values representing an HSL color code. If not valid, converts input as a standard color to HTML representation. On output, converts color to HSL value.

(HSL support was added in PxPlus 2014.)

HTML

Standard 8-bit data that uses HTML encoding for <, >, and & as &lt; &gt; and &amp; respectively. On output, converts all characters less than $20$ or greater than $7E$ to their respective &#xXX; form.

On input, the HTML format will also replace most industry standard HTML Character Entity codes such as &#38;trade&#59; (&trade;), &#38;yen&#59; (&yen;), or &#38;copy&#59; (&copy;) with their respective UNICODE character equivalents.

(HTML support was added in PxPlus 2017.)

LINK

Same as URL but does not translate / (slash) to %2F.

(LINK support was added in PxPlus 2020.)

NATIVE

When NATIVE is specified, the system will use either ASCII or UTF8, depending on the setting of the 'U8' system parameter. (UTF-8 is used when the parameter is non-zero.)

QPRINT

Used to convert Quoted Printable text. By default, output of quoted printable text will wrap/break at 76 characters. When converting to QPRINT format, all end-of-line characters will be converted to the OS end-of-line characters; i.e. on Windows, a Carriage Return followed by Line Feed ($0d0a$), and on UNIX/Linux, a Line Feed ($0a$).

The following conversion formats can also be used:

(QPRINT support was added in PxPlus 2017.)

RGB

When specified for the INPUT format, tries to convert input as three numeric values representing an RGB color code; if not valid, converts input as a standard color to HTML representation. On output, convert color to RGB value.

(RGB support was added in PxPlus 2014.)

RTF

This can only be used as input (from) data format and tells the system to strip the RTF formatting information from the input, returning just the text.

UNICODE

Available on Windows and on UNIX/Linux.

(As of PxPlus v9.10, build 9201)

URL

The URL Encode/Decode is used to convert characters that cannot be used in a Web-based URL to their appropriate hexadecimal equivalent with a leading % character.

URL?

Same as URL but does not translate either / (slash) or ? (question mark) until a ? is found in the string.

After the ? (question mark), / (slash) becomes %2F and ? (question mark) becomes %1F as in the URL conversion.

(URL? support was added in PxPlus 2020.)

UTF8

Available on Windows and on UNIX/Linux.

(As of PxPlus v9.10, build 9201)

UUENCODE

Uuencode repeatedly takes in a group of three bytes to create a 24-bit value that is split into four groups of six, which are treated as numbers between 0 and 63. Decimal 32 is added to each number and they are output as ASCII characters, which will be in the range 32 (space) to 32+63 = 95 (underscore).

XML

Standard 8-bit data that uses XML encoding for <, >, &, ', and " as &lt; &gt; &amp; &apos; and &quot; respectively. On output, converts all characters less than $20$ or greater than $7E$ to their respective &#xXX; form. Hex/Unicode characters will also be replaced. (as of PxPlus v8.30, build 9190.3)

When the CDATA tag is used, data will be passed "as is" within CDATA.

(CDATA support was added to XML conversion in PxPlus 2014.)