If you have editing requirements that cannot be met by using the
edit codes described above, you can use an edit word. An edit word
is a character literal or a named constant specified in positions
53 - 80 of the output specification. It describes the editing pattern
for an numeric and allows you to directly specify:
- Blank spaces
- Commas and decimal points, and their position
- Suppression of unwanted zeros
- Leading asterisks
- The currency symbol, and its position
- Addition of constant characters
- Output of the negative sign, or CR, as a negative indicator.
The edit word is used as a template, which the system applies to
the source data to produce the output.
The edit word may be specified directly on an output specification
or may be specified as a named constant with a named constant name
appearing in the edit word field of the output specification. You
can obtain the edited value of the field in calulation specifications
using the built-in function %EDITW (edit word).
Edit words are limited to 115 characters.