Converting and transferring AS/400 packed decimal fields to ASCII systems

I have a physical file in AS/400 that contains data like that: 'BB_¶__LOCLFRAM237'. I want to transfer the file to my PC and convert the packed characters to ASCII. Is there any way to do this?
There are two options:

You can use command CPYTOIMPF. This command convert database file to "flat file" (i.e it makes target file with packed represented as strings). The converted file can be sent to ASCII systems using FTP.

You can use file transfer utilities. One example is iSeries Access file transfer, this utility will translate AS/400 fields (including packed decimal fields) to ASCII systems with no problem.

This was first published in November 2008

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