READING A TAB DELIMITED FILE IN ILE COBOL

I am trying to read a tab delimited file, which was created by Excel.
This ILE COBOL Version 6, Release 1.



I have the tab character in working storage defined as:



01 WS-HEX-TAB PIC X(01) VALUE X"09".



This is the unstring statement:



UNSTRING WS-INPUT

DELIMITED BY WS-HEX-TAB

INTO

IN-MEMBER-NUM

IN-LIC

IN-FILLER1

IN-GLN

IN-ST-DATE

IN-NAME

IN-ADDR1

IN-ADDR2

IN-CITY

IN-ST

IN-FILLER2

IN-ZIP

IN-PHONE

IN-DESC

IN-REG

Etc.....



It acts like it does not recognize the tab. When I go into the debugger,
the beginning of WS-INPUT is in the first field IN-MEMBER-NUM, and the
character that is supposed to be the tab character looks like a
highlighted square or box. It is not unstringing the data. The other
fields past the first field in the unstring statement are blank.



I had a similar problem with another file, which was a sequential file
with fields delimited by the "|" (vertical bar). In that situation, the
"|" character became a "]" (right bracket), and I was able to unstring
it. But I don't know what kind of character is represented by the
highlighted box.



I can't make the file comma delimited or space delimited because it has
name, description and address fields with commas and spaces.



Any help would be appreciated!





Nancy Barney

IT - Programmer

Dakota Drug, Inc.