Dumb "figurative constant" rules



Just as an (amusing???) follow-up to the current discussion on HIGH-VALUES and
LOW-VALUES, I thought I would mention the following:

The '85 Standard (and I assume all earlier ones) allows one to MOVE

- QUOTE
- HIGH-VALUES
- LOW-VALUES
- all "literal" *> with alphanumeric characters in the literal

to a NUMERIC (any usage - I think) receiving field - in SOME very rare cases
LOW-VALUES *might* be a "DISPLAY" zero or HIGH-VALUES a display nine, but I
suspect this is INCREDIBLY rare. When QUOTE is a numeric integer, is even more
problematic.

The '02 Standard made this "archaic" (not obsolete) and the draft of the '08
Standard gives some more examples of when this would work - but not as expected,
e.g.

05 Num1 Pic 99V99
...
Move All "9" to Num1
Evaluate Num1
when 99.99
Display "You might think so - but NO"
when 99.00
Display "This is standard - but is it expected?"
End-Evaluate

P.S. The '02 Standard introduced "Function Highest-Algebraic" (and
Lowest-Algebraic) to give the "expected" results for the above code.


--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com


.



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