Re: AIX Cobol II and Packed Decimal fields

"alf" <alf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1130394756.656497.253930@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I know there is a problem using LINE SEQUENTIAL as the COMP fields
> could be misconstrued to be record terminators.

That's not a problem at all. It's an impossibility, so don't waste any
effort trying to make it 'work.'

> We have tried the RSD format and the NAT format

I never heard of those, but if they require the use of 0x0A (line feed) as
anything other than a record delimiter, they won't work, either.

"In theory" you might get away with ORGANIZATION IS LINE SEQUENTIAL,since
0x0A should never appear in USAGE PACKED-DECIMAL data (but *can* be valid in
USAGE BINARY data) , and it's 'unlikely' 0x0A is - in this particular
application - a valid data character in any USAGE DISPLAY PICTURE IS X(any)
...field..... (hmm... unless you 'filter' the data FIRST?).

But if you have to filter the data first, you can't use LINE SEQUENTIAL for
that anyway, so you may as well just change your program to use ORGANIZATION
SEQUENTIAL with either fixed or variable-length records.

FWIW, here's a freebie tutorial I wrote a few years ago on using
COBOL-created data on other systems or with non-COBOL programs. Maybe it
will give you an alternate idea:
http://www.talsystems.com/tsihome_html/downloads/C2IEEE.htm

MCM







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