Dumb Question Time: Qualification of data items

From: PAUL RAULERSON (pkraulerson_at_verizon.net)
Date: 06/23/04 

Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 02:25:59 GMT

I am not sure if I am mixing COBOL and Assembler, or Ada (or some other
language) up,
but isn't there a way to qualify a set of data items within a block
statement?

Something like:

    USING A-RECORD
       MOVE 'A' TO ITEM-1
       MOVE 2 TO ITEM-2
       END-USING

    USING B-RECORD
        MOVE 'B' TO ITEM-1
        MOVE 3 TO ITEM-2
        END-USING

  RATHER THAN

       MOVE 'A' TO ITEM-1 OF A-RECORD
       MOVE 2 TO ITEM-2 OF A-RECORD
       MOVE 'B' TO ITEM-1 OF B-RECORD
       MOVE 3 TO ITEM-2 OF B-RECORD

I swear, I thought this existed at least in IBM COBOL somewhere,
but I can not find anything like this at all in the reference manuals.

-Paul