HP 3000 Manuals

Micro Focus COBOL Language Reference - Additional Topics

Spaces 

Spaces in data of class NCHAR are represented by the DBCS code for space.
A space character represented by a 2-byte code is referred to as a DBCS
space.

The values assigned to a DBCS space are sensitive to the NCHAR, JAPANESE
and DBSPACEdirectives.  For further details of these directives see your
COBOL System Reference.

In common with all data items that do not have a VALUE clause, data items
of class NCHAR initially contain SBCS spaces.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation