Re: Storing non-printable chars in CHAR columns

Here at Bi-Tech Software, we also use COBOL and store binary (non-printable) values in character fields. We have found that, if the first character of a field is NULL (low values), the column is considered NULL by Informix. Note that a NULL column means a value which was not supplied, not just a value of binary "0". We also experienced problems using the import/export utilities. For this reason, we do not use the import/export utilities. We consider it a limitation, but we work around it. I'd be interested to hear a response from one of you Informix support-types. Will future versions of Informix continue to behave this way? Can the import/export utilities be enhanced to handle binary data in character fields?