Re: AIX Cobol II and Packed Decimal fields

If you want the files to be "useable" in AIX in NON-COBOL programs, you *might*
find it useful to:

A) convert the files to Line Sequential
*AND*
B) convert all numeric fields (COMP and COMP-3) to
USAGE DISPLAY SIGN IS LEADING SEPARATE

This would (certainly) take more storage (and require a "conversion program")
but might be more useful in the long run.

Otherwise, exactly what problems are you having with using the files "as is"
(variable length with COMP-3)?

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"alf" <alf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1130394756.656497.253930@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> We are doing a conversion from IBM mainframe to AIX. We are trying to
> do a minimal approach due to cost (of course). The problem is we have
> variable length files which have COMP-3 (packed decimal). We are NOT
> using CICS and want just a regular UNIX type file. We have tried the
> RSD format and the NAT format but cant quite get it to work... the
> files we are processing are rather big and making them all fixed length
> will chew a lot of disk space.
>
> I know there is a problem using LINE SEQUENTIAL as the COMP fields
> could be misconstrued to be record terminators.
>
> Any help would be appreciated...
>


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