1. A method, comprising: modifying an existing compiler library into a modified compiler library, wherein the existing compiler library is used by a source application; receiving source data; parsing the source data to specify a data type using file format information, wherein the file format information is used by both the source application and a target application, wherein the file format information comprises information that specifies first portions of the source data comprising character data and second portions of the source data comprising numeric data, wherein the file format information is external to the source data and to the modified compiler library, wherein the data type comprises a character data type and a numeric data type; and processing the source data using the modified compiler library at a target system, the source data being migrated from a source system to the target system, the source data having a plurality of portions encoded in a source encoding based on the data type, the modified compiler library is used by a processor to convert a portion of the source data into a target encoding to be manipulated by the target application.