ILE COBOL Language Reference

COBOL Words with DBCS Character

The following are the rules for forming user-defined words from DBCS characters:

Use of shift-out shift-in characters:
DBCS user-defined words begin with a shift-out character and end with a shift-in character.

Value range:
DBCS user-defined words can contain characters whose values range from hex 41 to hex FE for both bytes.

Contained characters:
DBCS user-defined words can contain only DBCS characters. DBCS user-defined words can contain characters that correspond to single-byte EBCDIC characters and those that do not correspond to single-byte EBCDIC characters. DBCS characters that correspond to single-byte EBCDIC characters follow the normal rules for COBOL user-defined words; that is, the characters A - Z, a - z, 0 - 9, and the hyphen (-) are allowed. The hyphen cannot appear as the first or last character. Any of the DBCS characters that have no corresponding single-byte EBCDIC character can be used in DBCS user-defined words.

Continuation rules:
DBCS words cannot be continued across lines.

Maximum length:
14 DBCS characters.

User-defined words:
The following types of user-defined words are supported in ILE COBOL. The second column indicates whether DBCS characters are allowed in words of a given type.
Type of user-defined word DBCS characters allowed
Alphabet-name Yes
Class-name (of data) Yes
Condition-name Yes
Data-name Yes
File-name Yes
Index-name Yes
Library-name No
Mnemonic-name Yes
Paragraph-name Yes
Program-name No
Record-name Yes
Section-name Yes
Text-name No
Note:
In order to use the user-defined COBOL Words with DBCS character, PROCESS option GRAPHIC must be in effect, otherwise the DBCS words will be treated as invalid characters.


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