The CLIST language uses the hexadecimal codes X'0E' and X'0F' to distinguishdouble-byte characters from EBCDIC characters. The hexadecimal code X'0E' indicates the beginning of a string of DBCS characters, and the code X'0F' indicates the end of a DBCS string. Properly delimited DBCS character strings can be passed as character data in CLIST variables, in comments, and in the operands of CLIST statements.

This document commonly refers to the beginning and ending DBCS delimiters as shift-out and shift-in characters. In examples, this document uses the convention <d1d2> to represent DBCS strings enclosed in their shift-out and shift-in characters, where d1 and d2 each represent a DBCS character, < represents X'0E', and > represents X'0F'.

SET A = ABC<d1d2> + 
 <d3d4>DEF               /* result: &A = ABC<d1d2d3d4>DEF