ILE COBOL Language Reference

Character-String Representation

The following symbols may appear more than once in one PICTURE character-string:

A  B  P  X  Z  9  0  /  ,  +  -  *  $

+-------------------------------IBM Extension--------------------------------+

 G      N

+----------------------------End of IBM Extension----------------------------+

The following symbols may appear only once in one PICTURE character-string:

S V . CR DB

+-------------------------------IBM Extension--------------------------------+

 E  1

+----------------------------End of IBM Extension----------------------------+

If the LOCALE phrase is specified, only the symbol 9 can appear more than once. If the LOCALE phrase is specified, the following symbols may appear only once in one PICTURE character string:

. + cs

An integer enclosed in parentheses immediately following any of the symbols that may occur more than once in a PICTURE character string specifies the number of consecutive occurrences of that symbol. The integer may be specified by a constant name. The number of consecutive occurrences cannot exceed 16 711 568.

For example, the following two PICTURE clause specifications are equivalent:

PICTURE IS $99999.99CR
 
PICTURE IS $9(5).9(2)CR

Each time any of the above symbols appears in the character-string, it represents an occurrence of that character or set of allowable characters in the data item.


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