Everything is stored in a computer in bytes. There are many ways to describe what those bytes represent. You can display the contents of each byte in binary, in hex or in integer(range of 0 to 255). For some character sets such as ASCII you can also display the contents of some bytes as an ASCII character.
The same is true for EBCDIC, some bytes can be displayed as characters.
Now the value -144:
when stored as EBCDIC characters it is 4EF1F4F4 in hex. (4 bytes)
When stored as ASCII characters it is 2D313434 in hex. (4 bytes)
If it is converted to packed decimal format it is 144D in hex. (2 bytes).
alphabet "i" and the opening bracket "(" are clubbed together to depict the input -144.
I suspect that this clubbed together value you show is the character representation of a hex value. I bet that not all numeric values will be something that you can display. ie the hex won't map to a displayable character.
The reason you had to edit your previous post was because there was a hidden hex value in what you had originally posted and the format program for this site took that char to mean move to a new line.
[ July 31, 2008: Message edited by: Norm Radder ]