HP 3000 Manuals

HP RPG/XL Utilities-Part 1 XSORT

Column 17 
Conditionally Forced Characters 

Forced control fields were generally discussed under the description of
column 7 entries.  In column 17 you make an entry only when you wish to
use a conditional force; for example, if you wanted to place a $ in a
control field presently containing an A, conditional force does not
change the input record but it will replace each A with a $ in that
position in the work and output records.

Your entry in column 17 identifies the character that you want replaced
in the control field.  XSORT checks the input records to see if the
control field contains the character you want replaced.  Your entry in
column 18 will then give XSORT the character you wish to have forced into
that control field's position in the work record.

Sometimes control fields contain any one of several characters and you
may wish to force a change for each of them.  If this is the case, use a
continuation character in column 19 (discussed below) on the
specifications for all but the first of the forced characters.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation