To assign initial value of hyphen to a variable

kunal jain · New User Joined: 19 May 2011 Posts: 59 Location: India

I need to assign a initial value of 108 times '-' to a variable.
I dont want to hardcode '-' 108 times.
Do we have an alternative of doing so .Please suggest.

For eg; 01 ws-temp picx(108) value '---------108 times'
I dont want to hardcode '-' 108 times since i have many such fields of different length in my code.
Do we have any other possible way of doing so.

Craq Giegerich · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 5:24 pm

What about reading the manual.

pic x(108) value all '-'.

kunal jain · New User Joined: 19 May 2011 Posts: 59 Location: India

Thank you ...Your help is really appreciated.

Bill Woodger · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 7:41 pm

Craq has the optimal solution for the problem as defined, but goodness, how many ways are there to do this? Literally lots (sic), I'd say.

pic x occurs 108 value '-'. In the procedure, MOVE ALL '-' (I don't like) INITIALISE (not so keen), INSPECT, good-old loop, offset MOVE (my probable preference for somehting more complicated than this).

If I had to type them all, I'd make it known to be longer to start with, then compile, remove one, compile, remove one, until I didn't get a compiler message about the value being too long....

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 8:12 pm

On the flip-side of this, figurative constants, such as LOW-VALUE(s), SPACE(s), ZERO(s) and HIGH-VALUE(s), don't not require an ALL, but you can include the ALL optionally.

So, you could say - MOVE SPACE, MOVE SPACES, MOVE ALL SPACE or MOVE ALL SPACES TO WS-TEMP and this is one in the same.

Note; If you specified MOVE '0' (which represents one ZERO), byte one of WS-TEMP would be set to '0' and the remaining bytes would be set to SPACES.

Using the figurative constants supplied with COBOL and you won't go wrong.

HTH....

Bill

Bill Woodger · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 8:28 pm

For some reason, I never liked the plurals for SPACE and ZERO, since they didn't do anything different. For LOW-, HIGH-, always the plural, even if only one byte. Funny old world.

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 8:42 pm

Bill,

I think you'd be surprised as to how some folks think that a MOVE using a singular or plural figurative constant are not the same or include ALL to add to the confusion.

Regards,

Bill

Phrzby Phil · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 8:54 pm

Thankfully I haven't seen this for a while, but I used to be surprised at people who felt the need to zeroize a variable before moving or calculating a value into it. That drove me crazy.

dick scherrer · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 9:57 pm

Phrzby Phil · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 10:32 pm

Dick -

I think you have misused " 'splain. "

You might explain it to them, but they have some 'splainin' to do to say why they think that way.

Robert Sample · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 10:36 pm

I saw a CICS program, once upon a time, that started

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 10:56 pm

Bill Woodger · Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2011 4:27 am

I've seen people desperate to initialise before move. Drives me nuts. Come across it in a program and it looks like there must be something missing.

Never seen it this way, before.