I would recommend using alternative characters, whenever possible, such as !! for concatenation, instead ||, and also avoid the "not sign" and choose mnemonics like NE instead of ^= depending on your code.
The FTP problem relates to the system-default codepage that's being used when transfering to z/OS (IBM mainframe). Research your options to override the codepage as needed, if you choose to continue with these special characters.
Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.