Re: How to find next number for an alphanum field? Any good and simple tricks?

On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:38 PM, Stone, Joel <Joel.Stone@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have a length 4 alphanum field which I need to find the next value (incremented by one value).

To be precise, you need to say what all the possible values are for a
given byte. (For example, maybe you can use any of the 256 binary
values. Or maybe you can use anything printable. Or maybe just upper-
and lowercase characters, plus digits.) Your examples suggest that you
are working with uppercase letters and the ten decimal digits, for a
total of 36 possible values.

And my shop would like it done in COBOL, but any algorithm will suffice.

Maybe use a base 36 table???

You certainly could. Your problem is essentially the same as one
raised in this mailing list in June 2015 by Gad Miron. The thread
starts here:

http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/201506/msg00533.html

You could also search for "The case of outnumbered numerator". Gad
eventually wound up adapting the code provided by Sam L later in that
thread:

http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/201506/msg00584.html

John Y.