Beginning with VisualAge Smalltalk V6.0, the currentCodePage method answers a String on Unix and MVS platforms and an Integer on Windows platforms. Thus, the current code page conversion support is inconsistent on supported platforms. Several of the code page conversion routines use the currentCodePage as an argument.

This currentCodePage inconsistency causes problems for applications that must execute on multiple platforms. For example, a user who passes String code pages to Windows conversion routines will encounter a walkback because the Windows conversion API expects Integers. UNIX accepts either Integers or Strings, but the 'iconv' API must be passed a String code page name in order to work properly.