RE: Passing numeric fields to COBOL program

Actually I wasn't very clear in my question.  What I meant to say was when
doing a SBMJOB for example and you call a program and it takes a parameter.
I enter X'0070198F'.  This is a date and its numeric.  Now that you mention
it I do have programs that do call other programs and it doesn't matter what
you define the fields.  However, I've always been told to do the parameters
for the SBMJOB command this way.  I know it may sound like a mundane
question, but I was just curious.
Gary Lehman
Programmer Analyst
Missouri Consolidated Health Care Plan

                -----Original Message-----
                From:   Jon Paris [mailto:paris@ca.ibm.com]
                Sent:   Tuesday, June 09, 1998 2:28 PM
                To:     MIDRANGE-L@MIDRANGE.COM
                Subject:        Re: Passing numeric fields to COBOL program

                >> Does anyone know why you have to pass a numeric field(ex
such as a date) in
                hex format?

                Gary  - other than for literals, COBOL does not have any
means to define a "hex
                format" so I'm not sure I know what you mean.  What I can
tell you is that
                COBOL has NO restrictions that I know of for assing
anything.  If you can post
                a brief example of what you're having a problem with I can
take a look.  The
                following however would work just fine.

                 Program A.

                 01  Date-Stuff.
                        05 Six-long Pic S9(6) Comp.
                        05 Eight-long Pic S9(8).
                 :
                 :
                 Procedure division.
                 :
                        Call 'B' using Six-long, Eight-long.




                 Program B.
                 :
                 Linkage section
                 77 Six-long Pic S9(6) Comp.
                 77 Eight-long Pic S9(8).

                 Procedure Division using Six-long, Eight-long.



                Jon Paris - AS/400 AD Market Support - paris@ca.ibm.com
                Phone: (416) 448-4019   -   Fax: (416) 448-4414
                +---
                | This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
                | To submit a new message, send your mail to
MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
                | To subscribe to this list send email to
MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
                | To unsubscribe from this list send email to
MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
                | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator:
david@midrange.com
                +---
+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---