unicode and non-unicode

[Former Member]

WHAT IS DIFFRENTS BETWEEN UNICODE AND NON UNICODE ?

BRIEFLY EXPLAIN ABOUT UNICODE?

THANKS IN ADVANCES

[Former Member]

A 16-bit character encoding scheme allowing characters from Western European, Eastern European, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Urdu, Hindi and all other major world languages, living and dead, to be encoded in a single character set. The Unicode specification also includes standard compression schemes and a wide range of typesetting information required for worldwide locale support. Symbian OS fully implements Unicode. A 16-bit code to represent the characters used in most of the world's scripts. UTF-8 is an alternative encoding in which one or more 8-bit bytes represents each Unicode character. A 16-bit character set defined by ISO 10646. A code similar to ASCII, used for representing commonly used symbols in a digital form. Unlike ASCII, however, Unicode uses a 16-bit dataspace, and so can support a wide variety of non-Roman alphabets including Cyrillic, Han Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, Bengali, and so on. Supporting common non-Roman alphabets is of interest to community networks, which may want to promote multicultural aspects of their systems.

ABAP Development under Unicode

Prior to Unicode the length of a character was exactly one byte, allowing implicit typecasts or memory-layout oriented programming. With Unicode this situation has changed: One character is no longer one byte, so that additional specifications have to be added to define the unit of measure for implicit or explicit references to (the length of) characters.

Character-like data in ABAP are always represented with the UTF-16 - standard (also used in Java or other development tools like Microsoft's Visual Basic); but this format is not related to the encoding of the underlying database.

A Unicode-enabled ABAP program (UP) is a program in which all Unicode checks are effective. Such a program returns the same results in a non-Unicode system (NUS) as in a Unicode system (US). In order to perform the relevant syntax checks, you must activate the Unicode flag in the screens of the program and class attributes.

In a US, you can only execute programs for which the Unicode flag is set. In future, the Unicode flag must be set for all SAP programs to enable them to run on a US. If the Unicode flag is set for a program, the syntax is checked and the program executed according to the rules described in this document, regardless of whether the system is a US or a NUS. From now on, the Unicode flag must be set for all new programs and classes that are created.

If the Unicode flag is not set, a program can only be executed in an NUS. The syntactical and semantic changes described below do not apply to such programs. However, you can use all language extensions that have been introduced in the process of the conversion to Unicode.

As a result of the modifications and restrictions associated with the Unicode flag, programs are executed in both Unicode and non-Unicode systems with the same semantics to a large degree. In rare cases, however, differences may occur. Programs that are designed to run on both systems therefore need to be tested on both platforms.

Refer to the below related threads

Regards,

Santosh

[Former Member]

Hi

Unicode provides a unique number for every character,

no matter what the platform,

no matter what the program,

no matter what the language.

The Unicode Standard has been adopted by such industry leaders as Apple, HP, IBM, JustSystem, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun, Sybase, Unisys and many others. Unicode is required by modern standards such as XML, Java, ECMAScript (JavaScript), LDAP, CORBA 3.0, WML, etc., and is the official way to implement ISO/IEC 10646. It is supported in many operating systems, all modern browsers, and many other products. The emergence of the Unicode Standard, and the availability of tools supporting it, are among the most significant recent global software technology trends.

Incorporating Unicode into client-server or multi-tiered applications and websites offers significant cost savings over the use of legacy character sets. Unicode enables a single software product or a single website to be targeted across multiple platforms, languages and countries without re-engineering. It allows data to be transported through many different systems without corruption.

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in modern software products and standards.

1. Following data types that can be interpreted as Character-type in Unicode Programming:

• C: Character (letters, numbers, special characters)

• N: Numeric character (numbers)

• D: Date

• T: Time

• STRING: Character string

• Character-type structures: Structures which either directly or in substructures contain only fields of types C, N, D or T

• String operations are only allowed for character-like operands

• X and XSTRING are no longer considered character-like types

• For Processing strings in BYTE MODE addition IN BYTE MODE is mandatory, Prefix “BYTE- “ for comparison operations, Only operands of type X or XSTRING allowed.

• For finding LENGTH and DISTANCE addition (BYTE / CHARACTER ) MODE is mandatory

Please reward if useful.