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.