What is the use of Packed Decimal

rajitha_215 · New User Joined: 26 Dec 2005 Posts: 2 Location: hyderabad

Hi,

Can you please give some detailed information about Packed decimals, Its usage and where exactly they are used.

khamarutheen · Active Member Joined: 23 Aug 2005 Posts: 677 Location: NJ

Hi rajitha,
u can check out the below link for ur info.

www.discinterchange.com/reading_COBOL_layouts_.html

Still need more then search in the forum u may get more.

rajesh_1183 · Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 12:02 pm

packed decimals are used to save the memory usage.They will occupy few bytes.

Rajesh

sbalajibe · New User Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Posts: 62

Hi rajitha,

Packed Decimal stores each digit data in half byte
This can be achieved in cobol by coding comp-3 in the program

eg :
01 a pic x(04).
01 b pic x(04) comp-3.

in this example a occupies 4 bytes whereas b occupies only 2 bytes of storage

thanks
balaji