I have previously written a tip about how you can use ISPF BROWSE to read a dataset in clear text although it is in ASCII format. One of my readers from abroad, Andrew Dossett, recently made be aware that it is also possible to edit an ASCII dataset in clear text. You just issue the EDIT command SOURCE ASCII. This feature has been available since z/OS version 12.

The magnificent thing about using SOURCE ASCII is that FIND and CHANGE works correctly. You simply do not have to worry about the hexadecimal values letters characters have compared to EBCDIC. When you are in SOURCE ASCII mode a character entered in a FIND or CHANGE command is an ASCII character. When you want to leave SOURCE ASCII mode you need to use the command RESET SOURCE (not SOURCE EBCDIC which seems more straight forward).

Andrew also made me aware that when you have entered DISPLAY ASCII or DISPLAY UTF8 mode in BROWSE, you can search for ASCII characters using the command FIND C'<string>' ASCII. This is a valuable piece of information which I did not catch up on in the first place. It has been rather frustrating for me that FIND did not work correctly in BROWSE, but this command solves the problem. Option ASCII only works with FIND in BROWSE and only when the search string is put in quotes and preceeded by a C.