Re: Setting A Hex Value in COBOL

In article <%yj7i.172509$nh4.82579@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
gary <garyinri@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have to modify an old COBOL program which probably hasn't been touched
since the mid-90's.

Oh, come now... it probably saw some Y2K remediation, check the date on
the load module in Prod.

[snip]

01 CH-NL-BIN PIC S9(4) COMP VALUE +21.
01 FILLER REDEFINES CH-NL-BIN.
02 FILLER PIC X.
02 CH-NL PIC X.
01 CH-FF-BIN PIC S9(4) COMP VALUE +12.
01 FILLER REDEFINES CH-FF-BIN.
02 FILLER PIC X.
02 CH-FF PIC X.
01 CH-1D-BIN PIC S9(4) COMP VALUE +29.
01 FILLER REDEFINES CH-1D-BIN.
02 FILLER PIC X.
02 CH-1D PIC X.
01 CH-56-BIN PIC S9(4) COMP VALUE +86.
01 FILLER REDEFINES CH-56-BIN.
02 FILLER PIC X.
02 CH-56 PIC X.
01 CH-31-BIN PIC S9(4) COMP VALUE +49.
01 FILLER REDEFINES CH-31-BIN.
02 FILLER PIC X.
02 CH-31 PIC X.

Hmmmmm... smells older than the 1990s. My guess is that NL is a NewLine
and FF is a FormFeed.


My question is this. I need to add a field which would end up containing a
X'E5'. The decimal equivalent is +229. Since the value of the field is
3-digits, will it still "fit" into the PIC X field?

Wait, now I'm confused... X'E5' is not '3-digits', it is a single byte.

Would it look something
like this?

01 CH-E5-BIN PIC S9(4) COMP VALUE +229.
01 FILLER REDEFINES CH-E5-BIN.
02 FILLER PIC X.
02 CH-E5 PIC X.

I'm assuming that this new E5 code is supposed to... *do* something, in a
manner similar to the other codes. This indicates that there's at least
two ways to test it, either by debugging or just sending off a 'let's go
see!' run.


This is some old MVS COBOL II code. Is there actually a better way to be
performing this function? Is there anything like MOVE X'E5' to CH-E5?

That's supported in some dialects of COBOL, aye. Is there something that
prevents you from seeing what kind of compile errors it might throw?

DD

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