What does --ascii option do for zip command?

In Mac OS X 10.5,

 $ man zip

shows

  -a
    --ascii
           [Systems using EBCDIC] Translate file to ASCII format.

and

 Info-ZIP                      16 June 2008 (v3.0)                      ZIP(1L)

What does it mean?

If I want to revision control som开发者_JS百科e .zip files using git and hg, what options should I consider using with zip command?

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As the description says, it's only for computers that use EBCDIC. If you've never heard of EBCDIC, that won't apply to you. i.e., don't bother using --ascii.

If you're curious, EBCDIC is a family of character encodings that are totally incompatible with ASCII, used on some IBM systems.