Re: how to reference a string AFTER a specific field name -- COBOL400-L

No - simpler than that Joel.

I've tried to show an equivalent to my understanding of what you are trying to do in this sample. Hope it helps. By the way I tested it and it works just fine. Note that the Linkage items are NOT included in the Procedure Division statement.

Identification Division. Program-Id. PTRPLAY.
Data Division.
Working-Storage Section.
01 inputRecord.
05 fixedBit Pic X(20).
05 variableBit Pic X(20)
Value 'Field1Field2999999'.
Linkage Section.
01 dummyRecord.
05 field1 Pic X(6).
05 field2 Pic X(6).
05 field3 Pic 9(6).
Procedure Division.
P-Main.
Set Address of dummyRecord to Address of variableBit.
Display 'field2 = ', field2, ' - field3 = ', field3.
Stop Run.

On 2013-03-01, at 10:16 AM, Stone, Joel wrote:

How do I set the address to the 1st character of Cust-nbr, which is the first field following the fixed portion. Is that a hard-coded off-set?

Thanks!

-----Original Message-----
From: cobol400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cobol400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jon Paris
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2013 8:25 PM
To: COBOL Programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)
Subject: Re: [COBOL400-L] how to reference a string AFTER a specific field name

Personally I would use the same kind of technique as I would for a trigger Joel.

This is a quick note (I'm starving - not having eaten yet) so if you need more detail holler but hopefully you'll get the idea.

In Linkage use a COPY DDS for each of the files whose images are contained in the journal records.

Use READ not READ INTO and set the address of the 01 linkage item you are processing this time to the address of the first character following JOTIME (or whatever the last field in the fixed portion is). Now you can process the Linkage version of the record's fields any way you want.

Even if the first part of the record is fixed it is probably a good idea to take and set the address with each input record. COBOL's FD is simply mapped to the record in the buffer (unlike RPG which moves the data to the fields) consequently the address of the record will change when the file is blocked.

Of course you could use READ INTO in which case the address of the WS item you read into will never change - but the program will be slower and usually with journal processing you have a lot of data to get through.

Hope this helps.

On 2013-02-28, at 5:07 PM, Stone, Joel wrote:

In a record format, I have several journal fields (replicated from a few of the DSPJRN outfile fields) and then several user fields for our app.

There are several file formats, one for each user file.

But, I want to use only one pgm routine to process all these files.

So, here is a file samples:

***** Cust file ******

01 record-fields.
05 JOENTTY pic x(2).
05 JODATE pic x(6).
05 JOTIME pic x(10).

05 Cust-nbr pic x(10).
05 Cust-name pic x(30).

...

The JOURNAL fields all line up in columns from one file to another, (start in the same position), but the user fields do not (the first user field always starts after JOTIME).

Does COBOL provide a way to reference everything AFTER the JOTIME field? WITHOUT using a hard-coded number?

For example, I am using

If record-fields (19:) =

Which is bad news if the journal fields expand.

I would prefer something like:

If record-fields (all fields after JOTIME -> to the end of record)

Note: the field Cust-nbr is other names in other files, such as Item-nbr, vendor-nbr, etc.

Clear as mud I am sure.

Can I rename the concatenation of all fields after JOTIME to a new name to use?

Any other ideas how to avoid reference by offset, which will be problematic down the road?

Thanks

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Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com