Shift Out and Shift In are control characters used to switch to a different character set and back for data exported to mainframes. Workstation-attached systems do not use the Shift Out and Shift In characters.
- Shift Out shifts to an alternative character encoding, which for Teradata is always a double-byte encoding.
- Shift In returns to the normal character encoding, which for Teradata is always a single-byte encoding.
The system assumes that all character strings (with the exception of CHARACTER SET GRAPHIC columns outside of Field mode) are in single-byte mode initially, and must be returned to single-byte mode before the string ends.
The following session character sets are affected significantly by Shift Out/Shift In considerations for export widths.
- KatakanaEBCDIC
- Any session character set that ends in the string '_0I'
- Any site-defined session character set with STATEMACHINE SOSI0E0F.
For more information about these character sets in the context of session export widths, see International Character Set Support, B035-1125.