release character in edifact message

Question

I'm new to reading EDI FACT messages. Just got stuck in understanding of release character(?).

From google got this definition

This is a single character, which overrides the meaning of the next character, allowing a separator character to appear within a data element. The character can be a hexadecimal value. It applies to EDIFACT only.

Can anyone help me to understand this with any sort of example ?

Thanks

Answer 1

The release (escape) character is used when one of the separator characters is to be used within a data element (often a name, address, item description or other free text).

If the UNOA character set is used, the standard segment terminator is ' and the standard release character is ?.

To encode a contact name like Bill O'Reilly we'd end up with

CTA+IV:BILL O?'REILLY'

Note that each character set has its own set of standard separators. It's possible to override using the UNA segment, but if that's not used and the character set isn't UNOA, the separators won't be the ones mentioned above.