HP 3000 Manuals

Micro Focus COBOL Language Reference - Additional Topics

Procedure Division 

Conditional Expressions 

Condition-name.   

If a condition-name with a literal of class NCHAR is associated with an
elementary item which is not of class NCHAR, the literal is treated as an
SBCS alphanumeric literal.

Relation Conditions.   

Data items and literals of class NCHAR can be used in a relation
conditionwith any relational operator.  No conversion, editing or
de-editing is done and no distinction is made between items of category
NCHAR and items of category NCHAR-EDITED.

The operation performed is a nonnumeric comparison.  Since there is in
general no collating sequence between the characters in a DBCS character
set, the collating sequence used is based on the numeric values of the
bit patterns representing the characters, interpreted as if they were
binary numbers.

Note that if the DBCS character codes include codes for characters in the
SBCS character set, there is no guarantee that this collating sequence
orders them the same as in SBCS.

Where a character exists in both the DBCS and SBCS character sets, its
DBCS and SBCS representations are not regarded as equivalent.

The PROGRAM COLLATING SEQUENCE clause has no effect on comparisons
involving data items of class NCHAR or NCHAR literals.

If the operands are of unequal size, comparison proceeds as though the
shorter operand were extended on the right by enough DBCS spaces to make
them the same size.

Class Condition.   

An additional classtest, JAPANESE, is available.  This class test is true
if all characters in the data item being tested are valid single-byte
Katakana or double-byte characters, or if the data item contains all
spaces.

The ACCEPT Statement 

General Rule.   

In Format 1, both SBCS and DBCS data can be entered.  SBCS data is not
converted to DBCS data.

If a Format 1 ACCEPTof an NCHAR-EDITED data item, there is no validation,
conversion or character alignment of the data that you enter.  As a
result, the data might be corrupted.  Therefore, we recommend that you do
not use this method, or use it with caution.

In Formats 4 and 5, both single-byte and double-byte characters are valid
characters to be entered into an NCHAR data item.  However single-byte
characters are converted to their double-byte equivalent.

All normal editing features are supported for the ACCEPT of NCHAR data
items (backspace, retype, delete, restore, overtype and insert) on a
character by character basis.


NOTE  In some environments, such as a Japanese EUC environment, special
      actions or behavior may occur.  For further details of these
      directives see your COBOL System Reference.


The INITIALIZE Statement 

General Format.   

The General Formatis extended by the options NCHAR and JAPANESE as
additional alternatives to options such as ALPHABETIC or ALPHANUMERIC.

Syntax Rule.   

NCHAR and JAPANESE may not be specified together or in conjunction with
DBCS or NATIONAL.

General Rule.   

Specifying the NCHAR or JAPANESE option causes data items of category
NCHAR to be initialized.

The INSPECT Statement 

General Rule.   

Ifidentifier-1 is of class NCHAR, the count maintained in identifier-2 is
of DBCS characters, not bytes.

Syntax Rule.   

All the identifiers and literals except identifier-2 must be of class
NCHAR if any one of them is of class NCHAR.

The MOVE Statement 

All statements that involve moving data between items and/or literals of
class NCHAR obey the rules given for such moves under the General Rules
for The MOVEStatement later in this chapter.


            


NOTE  Class Alphanumeric is specified in this table as an illustration of
      the usage of single-byte or group data items.  For details of MOVE
      operations involving only single-byte data items refer to the MOVE
      statement in the chapter Program Definition in your Language 
      Reference.  For details of MOVE operations mixing single- and
      double-byte data item, refer to the following information and the
      table above.


Syntax Rules.   

   1.  The sending data item must not be of category NCHAR-EDITED.

   2.  If the receiving data item is of class NCHAR and the JUSTIFIED
       clause is specified, the sending data item must be of class NCHAR.

General Rules.   

   1.  If the sending data item is of class alphanumeric or alphabetic
       and the receiving data item is of class NCHAR then the single-byte
       characters in the source are converted into the equivalent
       double-byte characters in the target.  DBCS characters in the
       source are moved unchanged into the target.

       If a receiving data item is a different size from the sending data
       item, the data that is stored in the receiving item is truncated
       or padded on the right with DBCS spaces.

   2.  If the sending data item is of class NCHAR and the receiving data
       item is of class alphanumeric, then the hexadecimal values in the
       source are moved, unchanged, to the target data item on a byte by
       byte basis.

       If a receiving data item is a different size from the sending data
       item, the data that is stored in the receiving item is truncated
       or padded on the right with SBCS spaces.

   3.  If the sending data item is of class NCHAR and the receiving data
       item is also of class NCHAR, then the values in the source are
       moved, unchanged, to the target data item on a byte by byte basis.

       If a receiving data item is a different size from the sending data
       item, the data that is stored in the receiving item is truncated
       or padded on the right with DBCS spaces.

   4.  If the sending data item is of class alphanumeric, alphabetic or
       NCHAR and a receiving data item is of category NCHAR-EDITED,
       editing is carried out on that receiving data item.

       If a receiving data item is a different size from the sending data
       item, the data is stored in that receiving item and truncated or
       padded on the right with DBCS spaces.

       If the sending data item is of class alphanumeric or alphabetic,
       the hexadecimal values of the single-byte characters in the source
       are converted to the equivalent double-byte characters in the
       target.  DBCS characters in the source are moved unchanged into
       the target.

   5.  If the sending data item is of class NCHAR and the receiving data
       item is class NCHAR with the JUSTIFIED clause specified, then the
       values in the source data item are moved, unchanged, to the target
       data item on a byte by byte basis.

       When a receiving data item is described with JUSTIFIED clause and
       the sending data item is larger than the receiving data item, the
       leftmost characters are truncated.  When the receiving data item
       is described with the JUSTIFIED clause and it is larger than the
       sending data item, data is aligned at the rightmost character
       position in the data item with DBCS spaces padding from the
       leftmost character positions.

The SEARCH Statement 

General Rule.   

If identifier-1 is of classNCHAR then in Format 1 the value maintained in
identifier-2 consists of DBCS characters.

The STRING Statement 

General Rule.   

If identifier-3 is of classNCHAR then the relative position indicated by
identifier-4 gives the position in DBCS characters.

Syntax Rule.   

All the identifiers and literals except identifier-4 must be of class
NCHAR if any one of them is of class NCHAR.

The UNSTRING Statement 

General Rule.   

If identifier-1 is of class NCHARthen the relative position indicated by
identifier-7 gives the position in DBCS characters and the count
maintained in identifier-6 is of DBCS characters.

Syntax Rule.   

All of identifier-1, identifier-2, identifier-3, literal-1 and literal-2
must be of class NCHAR if any one of them is of class NCHAR.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation