Special Characters getting convert to slash (/)

[BrianGarland]

This was discussed in the 1/17/25 Code for IBM i Zoom call. I had recently seen it so I was able to reproduce it easily.

We have some source members with the tab character in them (x'05'). I have no idea how they got in there!

When first loaded they look fine. If you save them, close them, and reopen them you will then see the slash (/) character. I've attached a screenshot of the slashes and the "output" tab from VS Code. If you need anything else let me know.

Code for IBM i log.txt

Context	Version
Code for IBM i version	2.14.5
Visual Studio Code version	1.95.3
Operating System	win32_x64

Active extensions

Code for IBM i Walkthroughs (vscode-ibmi-walkthroughs): 0.5.0
Configuration Editing (configuration-editing): 1.0.0
Db2 for IBM i (vscode-db2i): 1.8.0
ESLint (vscode-eslint): 3.0.10
Emmet (emmet): 1.0.0
Error Lens (errorlens): 3.22.0
Git (git): 1.0.0
Git Base (git-base): 1.0.0
GitHub (github): 0.0.1
GitHub Authentication (github-authentication): 0.0.2
GitLens — Git supercharged (gitlens): 16.2.0
IBM i Debug (ibmidebug): 2.0.2
IBM i Project Explorer (vscode-ibmi-projectexplorer): 2.12.0
JSON Language Features (json-language-features): 1.0.0
Merge Conflict (merge-conflict): 1.0.0
Node Debug Auto-attach (debug-auto-launch): 1.0.0
RPGLE (vscode-rpgle): 0.28.6
Source Orbit (vscode-sourceorbit): 1.0.2
TODO Highlight (vscode-todo-highlight): 1.0.5
TypeScript and JavaScript Language Features (typescript-language-features): 1.0.0

---

Remote system

Setting	Value
IBM i OS	V7R5M0
Tech Refresh	n/a
CCSID Origin	37
Runtime CCSID	37
Default CCSID	37
SSHD CCSID	?
cqsh	true
SQL	Enabled
Source dates	Enabled

Enabled features

/QOpenSys/pkgs/bin	/usr/bin	/QSYS.lib/ILEDITOR.lib	/QSYS.LIB	/QIBM/ProdData/IBMiDebugService/bin	/QOpenSys/QIBM/ProdData/JavaVM/jdk80	/QOpenSys/QIBM/ProdData/JavaVM/jdk11
bash	attr	GETNEWLIBL.PGM	QZDFMDB2.PGM	startDebugService.sh	64bit	64bit
find	iconv
git	setccsid
grep	uname
ls
md5sum
sort
stat
tar

Shell env

BUILDLIB=EMPBJG
CURLIB=EMPBJG
HOME=/home/BRIAN
HOST=dev01
LIBLS=PROFOUNDUI QTEMP QGPL VGPL TECHCOMMON VIPDEVELOP VVIPEYE
LOGIN=brian
LOGNAME=brian
MAIL=/var/spool/mail/brian
PASE_USRGRP_LIMITED=N
PATH=/QOpenSys/usr/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/QOpenSys/usr/bin/X11:/usr/sbin:.:/usr/bin
SHELL=/QOpenSys/usr/bin/bsh
SSH_CLIENT=172.18.34.54 61093 22
SSH_CONNECTION=172.18.34.54 61093 172.20.10.240 22
TZ=<EST>5<EDT>,M3.2.0,M11.1.0
USER=brian
USERNAME=brian
WORKDIR=/home/BRIAN

Variants

{
  "american": "#@$",
  "local": "#@$",
  "qsysNameRegex": {}
}

[worksofliam]

For reference, this might be an EBCDIC->UTF8 issue and not nessecerily something going wrong with VS Code.

x05 is a non-printable character by the looks: https://kadler.io/ebcdic/ibm-037/

[BrianGarland]

For sure non-printable. x'05' is a tab.

Just weird that it seems to change the value when saving.

When I see it I drop all the characters before the actual text and use spaces to line things back up.