Re: Passing numeric fields to COBOL program

At 10:12 AM 6/9/98 -0500, Gary Lehman wrote:
>Does anyone know why you have to pass a numeric field(ex such as a date) in
>hex format?  I'm trying to pass an 8 digit instead of 6 like we've always
>done, but I never had anyone explain to me why hex format is used.  Does it
>have anything to do with packing data? 

Gary,

Assuming that you are talking about passing a numeric value from a command line 
or SBMJOB in the CMD() parameter via the CALL command, the system passes these 
by value, not by reference, and numeric values are always passed as packed 
15.5. In order to pass anything else, you need to specify it in hex. You can 
get around this by creating your own command in which you specify the actual 
length of the variable.

hth
Pete
 

Pete Hall
peteh@inwave.com 
http://www.inwave.com/~peteh/

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