RE: Testing for valid numeric in an alpha field

["Jerry Thomas" <jerryt@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

If you are sure you have numeric data in VNCOMPANY then the below statement
will do what you want.

COMPUTE WS-VND-COMPANY = FUNCTION NUMVAL(VNCOMPANY)

Jerry


-----Original Message-----
From: cobol400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:cobol400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Dan
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 9:30 AM
To: cobol400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Testing for valid numeric in an alpha field

I know how to do this in RPG but not Cobol:

I've got a 15-character alpha that is supposed to contain a 4-digit number
left-justified.  In my
Cobol program, VNCOMPANY is a 15-character alpha field and WS-VND-COMPANY is
a 4-digit numeric.
When I do this:
    MOVE VNCOMPANY TO WS-VND-COMPANY.
and VNCOMPANY contains '40             ', I get a decimal data error.

In RPG, I'd use a MOVEL and a TESTN.  Off the top of my head, the only way I
can see doing this in
Cobol is to check the first four bytes of the field individually to be in
the range of '0' through
'9'.  (Bytes 5-15 would have to be blank for our validation purposes.)

Any suggestions?

TIA, Dan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
This is the COBOL Programming on the iSeries/AS400 (COBOL400-L) mailing list
To post a message email: COBOL400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/cobol400-l
or email: COBOL400-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/cobol400-l.