What is the value of an uninitialized alphanumeric variable?

sanaathana · New User Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 3 Location: India

Is it possible to predict the value of an uninitialized alphanumeric variable's value?

IF TABLE-SW = 'N'
THEN
NEXT SENTENCE
ELSE
PERFORM 100-INITIALIZE THRU 100-EXIT.

Here TABLE-SW is not initialized anywhere.
How is the value predicted?

Thanks a lot!!

guptae · Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 1:03 pm

Hi sanaathana,

We cant predict the value of a variable if it is not initialized & does not have any value clause.

sanaathana · New User Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 3 Location: India

Isn't there any fill value clause or something equivalent during compilation time?

Does this mean that the programmer of the above piece of code expected the random/junk value present in the uninitialised variable to not be 'N'?

surya_pathaus · Active User Joined: 28 Aug 2006 Posts: 110

Hi,

I think when alphanumeric field is not intialized then it will take "LOW VALUES".

guptae · Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:51 pm

Hi Surya,

I dont thk so?

sanaathana · New User Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 3 Location: India

Ekta, I think uninitialized alphanumeric variables will have low-values. Noticed this -uninitialised AN vars having low-values- in 2 cases . There might be some catch to this though.

I'll try to confirm this.

Thanks Ekta and Surya!

mmwife · Super Moderator Joined: 30 May 2003 Posts: 1592

The following was stated from IBM's E COBOL reference manual in the link below:

William Thompson · Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 11:03 pm

In the (really) old days, all programmers pre-initialized working storage.....
Later there were releases of COBOL that insured clear low value working storage and most newer programmers knew that they could trust that fact....
Then along came LE and it did not automatically provide cleared storage and that really messed up, among other things, CICS maps......
There is a LE parm that forces LE to provide cleared storage and nowadays most shops have it so.....