Left shift of fields in file when the previous field contains a utf8 character

Line Sequential files can contain only printable ASCII characters unless you use the configuration option INSERTNULL. It may also be a problem with how vi interprets the character. Can you please attach a small file that demonstrates the problem so that I may review it?

Hi Chris, It's great to talk to you again. I hope you can help me.

I think the problem is that bytes are being written, not characters. For example, the byte representation of the letter Ñ is c391 (2 bytes), so 40 bytes translate to 39 printable characters.

I've run an `od` (octal dump) on the file, and there are indeed 40 bytes in the field containing the Ñ.

Is there any way to maintain the 40 printable characters even if it contains UTF-8 characters?

I attach the file , we genetate the file without extension , but I had to add an extension because otherwise it wouldn't let me attach it

The UTF-8 representation of the character is always going to be 2 bytes in the file as that is how it is represented in the UTF-8 character set.

If you want it to be stored as one byte you would have to convert it to ASCII/ANSI before writing it.

No guarantees but here is an example that works in your case. It will convert a string of UTF-8 characters including yours to ANSI and then write the file.

       identification division.
       program-id. Program1.

       environment division.
       configuration section.
           select test-file assign to "testfile.dat"
                            organization is line sequential
                            file status is file-status.
       data division.
       fd test-file.
       01 test-rec pic x(15).
       working-storage section.
       01 file-status   pic x(2).
       01 my-char       pic x(15)   value spaces.
       01 my-utf        pic x(15)  value x"C391C391C391C3913132".
       01 out-length    pic x(4) comp-x value 15.
       01 reserved      pic x(4) comp-x value 0.
       01 status-code   pic x(4) comp-5.
       procedure division.


           call "CBL_STRING_CONVERT" using by reference my-utf
                                by value 15
                                by value 0
                                by reference my-char
                                by reference out-length
                                by value 3
                                by value 0
                                by reference reserved
                                returning status-code.
           open output test-file
           move my-char to test-rec
           write test-rec
           display file-status
           close test-file
           open input test-file
           read test-file
           close test-file

           goback.

       end program Program1.

Thank you so much for your help Chris, but unfortunately it doesn't work for what I need.

I wrote this porgram :

identification division.
       program-id. anook7.
       author. cdepaz.
       date-written. 04.02.2026.
      ******************************************************************
      * progrma de prueba fichero con caracteres UTF8
      ******************************************************************
      ******************************************************************
       environment division.
      ******************************************************************
      ******************************************************************
       configuration section.
      ******************************************************************
       special-names.
          decimal-point is comma.

       input-output section.
      ******************************************************************
       file-control.
       select test-file assign to "testfile.dat"
                       organization is line sequential
                       file status is file-status.
      ******************************************************************
       data division.
       file section.
       fd test-file.
       01 test-rec.
          05 test-rec-char pic x(15).
          05 test-rec-num  pic 9(05).

      ******************************************************************
       working-storage section.
      ******************************************************************
       01 sw-fin                       pic 9 value zero.
          88 si-fin                        value 1.
          88 no-fin                        value zero.

       01 file-status   pic x(2).
       01 my-char       pic x(15)  value spaces.
       01 my-utf        pic x(15)  value x"C391C391C391C3913132".
       01 out-length    pic x(4) comp-x value 15.
       01 reserved      pic x(4) comp-x value 0.
       01 status-code   pic x(4) comp-5.

      *-----------------------------------------------------------------
      ******************************************************************
       linkage section.
      *-----------------------------------------------------------------
       procedure division.
      ******************************************************************
      *-----------------------------------------------------------------
           call "CBL_STRING_CONVERT" using by reference my-utf
                                by value 15
                                by value 0
                                by reference my-char
                                by reference out-length
                                by value 3
                                by value 0
                                by reference reserved
                                returning status-code.
           open output test-file
           move 'ABCDEFG' to test-rec-char
           move 0       to test-rec-num
           write test-rec

           move my-char to test-rec-char
           move 0       to test-rec-num
           write test-rec
           close test-file

           open input test-file
           read test-file at end set si-fin to true
           end-read
           perform until si-fin
              display test-rec
              read test-file at end set si-fin to true
           end-perform
           close test-file
           .
       fin.
           goback.
 

end the resul is :

There is a left shift for each utf8 character

the problem is that in our system the environment variable is LANG=es_ES.UTF-8 and the out-encoding 3 ->

ASCII/MBCS characters (current locale) It depends on the locale, and since it's utf8 the function does nothing