Prog to calculate the length of the string within a variable

sampathkmn · New User Joined: 12 Dec 2005 Posts: 31 Location: bangalore

hi everybody,

i have a doubt:

how to code in a cobol program to calculate the length of the string within a variable?

Eg: 01 A PIC X(80).

and i am passing 40 length string to A(say i am passing any random value)
and i wish to find out the exact length of string stored in variable A.

i413678 · Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2006 3:26 pm

Hi,

I dont think so there is direct function to find the length of the string....

for this you need to reverse the string ans inspect the reversed string till you find the character...gives the total number of training spaces.

subtract this spaces count from the full length you will get the length of string given by you.....

correct me if i am wrong.....

pavan

elonics · New User Joined: 05 Jul 2005 Posts: 49 Location: India

Hai friend,
We have a function which tells the length of a string that has been declared. i.e

If WS-STR is declared as

i413678 · Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2006 4:24 pm

Hi elonics

thanks for your information

I learned one new thing.......

pavan

dipanshu · New User Joined: 16 Jan 2006 Posts: 53 Location: pune

Hi,

As I understood, above coding is only meant for single spaces, what if there are multiple spaces?

For example:-

'Abd sher khahn' How to calculate the length for this?

elonics · New User Joined: 05 Jul 2005 Posts: 49 Location: India

Here is the answer to the above question. It finds how may non blank characters in a string .

pa1chandak · New User Joined: 31 Jan 2006 Posts: 55

DISPLAY LENGTH OF WS-STR
WILL GIVE YOU THE LENGTH OF FIELD

DO SEND ME THE REPLY

PAWAN C.
09822546416
pa1chandak@yahoo.com

elonics · New User Joined: 05 Jul 2005 Posts: 49 Location: India

Hai pa1chandak,

"DISPLAY LENGTH OF WS-STR" will give you only length that it is declared with but not that what it actually contains.

El'onics
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"I am the best or atleast better than many but never worst"

sudheer_kumar · New User Joined: 27 Dec 2005 Posts: 16

Hai pa1chandak,
I analyzed the code. I think your logic is not correct. For reason see below.

IF WS-STR(I:1) EQUAL SPACE
ADD 1 TO WS-LEN-1 ---- > Same
ELSE
ADD 1 TO WS-LEN-1 ---- > Same
END-IF

I think for the above reason we can remove the If condition and just we use
PERFORM VARYING I FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL I > WS-LEN-2
DISPLAY WS-STR(I:1)
ADD 1 TO WS-LEN-1
END-PERFORM

I ran your code using IBM VISUAL AGE COBOL . The output is a infinite loop.

elonics · New User Joined: 05 Jul 2005 Posts: 49 Location: India

Hai Sudheer,

I have done one mistake while posting.Sorry for that.The portion which is in else part is commented out in my program.
But my logic is exactly correct.

Usethis

MOVE 'UDAY KIRAN M' TO WS-STR
MOVE LENGTH OF WS-STR TO WS-LEN-2

PERFORM VARYING I FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL I > WS-LEN-2
IF WS-STR(I:1) EQUAL SPACE
ADD 1 TO WS-LEN-1
END-IF
END-PERFORM
SUBTRACT WS-LEN-1 FROM WS-LEN-2
DISPLAY 'WS-LEN - ' WS-LEN-2.

It will give you ws-len as 10 as i said earlier

El'onics.

Aji · New User Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 53 Location: Mumbai

hi

I will give the logic to find the exact length of a variable.

Initialize ws-cnt.
inspect A converting " " to "^".
inspect A tallying ws-cnt for all "^".
compute ws-cnt = length of A - ws-cnt.
inspect A converting "^" to " ".

ws-cnt will give u the exact length of A.

REGARDS

Aji Cherian

DavidatK · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 3:04 am

Sampathkmn,