Re: START KEY EQUAL TO


<docdwarf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:d9s49n$mv6$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> ... then unless you have a record on the file with the key of 'ABCDE '
> (five trailing spaces) my experience tells me that you will get a 23.

That may be what actually does happen, but unless I misread the wording in
the COBOL standards, I don't think that's supposed to be what happens.

'74/'85 both say that if the operands are unequal size, comparison proceeds
as though the longer one was truncated on the right such that its length is
equal to that of the shorter (START general rule 4).

'02 says the data for comparison is moved from the FD record area into a
temporary (START general rule 17a and 17b), the information from the
associated record key in the record of the file is moved into a second
temporary (general rule 17c), and the second temporary is truncated to the
same length as the first (also gemeral rule 17c).

The comparison is always between "equal length" items, and that comparison
length is that of the comparand, not of the record key.

Have I misread something? Have I missed something entirely?

-Chuck Stevens


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