EBCDIC characters are 8 bits long, and were originally used by IBM on their mainframe computers. There are various types of EBCDIC tables used, depending upon such things as what country the computer was intended for. For intance, the character which is represented by hexadecimal 5B is usually a dollar sign ( $) in the USA, but might be a Pound Sterling sign (£ ) elsewhere. The table below is an EBCDIC table such as might be used in the USA. For data in the NSSDC, only control characters (such as NUL) and those characters available in a standard QWERTY keyboard are to be expected. Other characters are not expected to be in the NSSDC's data sets and were typically not used or even available when many of the data sets were written.
| Hex digit |
x0 |
x1 |
x2 |
x3 |
x4 |
x5 |
x6 |
x7 |
x8 |
x9 |
xA |
xB | xC |
xD |
xE |
xF |
| 0x |
NUL Null |
SOH Start of Heading |
STX Start of Text |
ETX End of Text |
PF Punch Off |
HT Horizontal Tab |
LC Lower Case |
DEL Delete |
SMM Start of Manual Message |
VT Vertical Tab |
FF Form Feed |
CR Carraige Return |
SO Shift Out |
SI Shift In |
||
| 1x |
DLE Data Link Escape |
DC1 Device Control 1 |
DC2 Device Control 2 |
TM Tape Mark |
RES Restore |
NL New Line |
BS Backspace |
IL Idle |
CAN Cancel |
EM End of Medium |
CC Cursor Control |
CU Customer Use 1 |
IFS Interchange File Separator |
IGS Interchange Group Separator |
IRS Interchange Record Separator |
IUS Interchange Unit Separator |
| 2x |
DS Digit Select |
SOS Start of Significance |
FS Field Separator |
BYP Bypass |
LF Line Feed |
ETB End of Transmission Block |
ESC Escape |
SM Set Mode |
CU2 Customer Use 2 |
ENQ Enquiry |
ACK Acknowledge |
BEL Bell or Alert |
||||
| 3x |
SYN Synchronous Idle |
PN Punch On |
RS Reader Stop |
UC Upper Case |
EOT End of Transmission |
CU3 Customer Use 3 |
DC4 Device Control 4 |
NAK Negative Acknowledge |
SUB Substitute |
|||||||
| 4x |
SP Space |
¢ Cent Sign |
. Period |
< Less-than sign |
( Left Par |
+ Plus sign |
| Vertical Bar |
|||||||||
| 5x |
& Ampersand |
! Exclamation Sign |
$ Dollar sign |
, Comma |
; Semicolon |
Circumflex |
||||||||||
| 6x |
- Hyphen |
, Comma |
% Percent Sign |
_ Underscore |
> Greater Than Sign |
? Question Mark |
||||||||||
| 7x |
Grave Accent |
: Colon |
# Pound or Number Sign |
@ At Sign |
' Apostrophe |
= Equal Sign |
" Double Quote Sign |
|||||||||
| 8x |
a |
b |
c |
d |
e |
f |
g |
h |
i |
|||||||
| 9x |
j |
k |
l |
m |
n |
o |
p |
q |
r |
|||||||
| Ax |
~ Tilde |
s |
t |
u |
v |
w |
x |
y |
z |
[ Left Bracket |
||||||
| Bx |
] Right Bracket |
|||||||||||||||
| Cx |
{ Left Brace |
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
H |
I |
||||||
| Dx |
} Right Brace |
J |
K |
L |
M |
N |
O |
P |
Q |
R |
||||||
| Ex |
\ |
S |
T |
U |
V |
W |
X |
Y |
Z |
|||||||
| Fx |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
Nathan L. James, nate.james@gsfc.nasa.gov, +1-301-286-9789
Code 633, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
George Fleming, George.L.Fleming.1@gsfc.nasa.gov
Code 633/587, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA