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what will be length of formatted variable?


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saurabh39
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:50 pm
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Hi All,

I have a requirement wherein i am changing the BI to ZD. I want to know the relation between the length of input BI and the length of output ZD.
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guptae

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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:52 pm
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Hello Tushar,

Would you kindly give us sample i/p & output?
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saurabh39
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:57 pm
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Hi Ekta,

In one of the document, i read that if you have 4 byte BI, that changes to 10 byte ZD. And nowhere the exact relation betwenn the two length was mentioned.
my rquirement is to change the S9(09) Comp to ZD.
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mmwife

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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 8:35 pm
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Hi Tushar,

What I usually do is use the Windows calculator, set it toHex and enter FF for each binary byte you expect in the I/P. Then set to Dec and count the decimal digits.

Eg., for 2 binary bytes enter FFFF; the decimal result is 65535 (5 digits).
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saurabh39
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:03 pm
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Thank's Jack. It was really helpful.
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saurabh39
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:15 pm
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Hi Jack,

I have a silly question -
a packed decimal is named because of the way the number is stored in the memory. Similarly it goes for binary.

But why the ZD has been named as zoned decimal. Why we refer to displayable field as zoned decimal.
i am not able to figure any thing out of word zone.
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Frank Yaeger

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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:27 pm
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Quote:
In one of the document, i read that if you have 4 byte BI, that changes to 10 byte ZD. And nowhere the exact relation betwenn the two length was mentioned.


Tushar,

Which sort product are you using (DFSORT = ICE messages or Syncsort = WER messages)?
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saurabh39
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:29 pm
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Hi Frank,

I am using ICETOOL.
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Frank Yaeger

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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:30 pm
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Quote:
But why the ZD has been named as zoned decimal. Why we refer to displayable field as zoned decimal.
i am not able to figure any thing out of word zone.


A ZD value is stored internally like this:

zdzd...sd

By definition, the first nibble (z) of every byte but the last is called a "zone". The first nibble (s) of the last byte is the sign. d is a digit (0-9).
If you want to delve deeper than that, try a google search.
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Anuj Dhawan

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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:34 pm
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Hi,

Zonal/Zoned decimal is a format to use with EBCDIC input and output permitting a sign overpunch in the low order position of the field.

e.g.: + 1234 would be represented as: 1111/0001/1111/0010/1111/0011/1100/0100.
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Frank Yaeger

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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:46 pm
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Quote:
I am using ICETOOL.


That doesn't tell me which product you're using. You could be using DFSORT's ICETOOL or you could be using Syncsort's SYNCTOOL. PGM=ICETOOL will invoke the one you're using.

Look at the //TOOLMSG output and tell me whether you see ICExxxs messages (e.g. ICE600I) or SYTxxxs messages.
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dick scherrer

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Joined: 23 Nov 2006
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PostPosted: Tue May 06, 2008 7:36 am
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Hello Tushar,

Quote:
Why we refer to displayable field as zoned decimal.
i am not able to figure any thing out of word zone.


Once upon a time most data that was processed began life on "punched cards". These cards were 12x80. Ten of the positions were for zero thru nine (0-9). The other 2 were for the "zone punches" - "12-zone" (positive) and the "11-zone" (negative). These 2 were the top 2 on a card. The "sign" for a numeric field was "punched over" the least significant digit (the same way the sign is the high-order nibble of the low-order byte of a zoned-decimal number).

Incidentally, that same 80-column card is why the standard terminal is 80 characters wide. . .
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mmwife

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PostPosted: Tue May 06, 2008 8:50 pm
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and why most (if not all) of the utilities use 80 byte sysin data.
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