RE: Passing numeric fields to COBOL program

["Weatherly, Howard" <hweatherly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gary, 

The sign is the 'F' part of your example, if it were a
numeric field vs. a date field, the first time any
arithmatic operation was done on the field the 'Fox' would
change to 'C' or 'D' depending upon the value of the result.
For instance 2F - 3F = 1D (16) or 1F +1F = 2C(16). As it
relates to dates, the sign is there mostly to satisfy the
requirement of a packed decimal field, given the date
19980610 the result in a packed field (5 bytes) would be
|0|9|8|6|0| as you can see 1 byte total is wasted in the
high order 0 and the low 
order sign however overall three bytes are      |----------|
saved because in zoned decimal the byte count would be eight
and would      
look like this  | 1|9|9|8|0|6|1| 0|
|1|9|0|1|F|
                |F|F|F|F|F|F|F|F|               

hope this helps more than adds to the confusion.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gary Lehman [SMTP:Gary_Lehman@mail.mchcp.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 1998 8:26 AM
> To:   'MIDRANGE-L@MIDRANGE.COM'
> Subject:      RE: Passing numeric fields to COBOL program
> 
> So if I defined the field in my program as packed it HAS
> to be hex?  This
> may sound like a dumb question but if I key X'0070198F' is
> the first 0 the
> sign digit?
> 
> Gary Lehman
> Programmer Analyst
> Missouri Consolidated Health Care Plan
> 
>               -----Original Message-----
>               From:   tuohyp@ibm.net
> [mailto:tuohyp@ibm.net]
>               Sent:   Tuesday, June 09, 1998 6:35 PM
>               To:     'MIDRANGE-L@MIDRANGE.COM'
>               Subject:        RE: Passing numeric fields
> to COBOL program
> 
>               Gary, does this problem occur when you are
> passing the
> parameter from a command line? If so, the problem is that
> the number you are
> passing is signed where as the program is expecting
> packed, hence you key
> the number as a hex value.
> 
>               Paul Tuohy
> 
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