You can use national data with the PROCEDURE DIVISION and compiler-directing statements shown in the table below.
| COBOL statement | Can be national | Comment | For more information |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACCEPT | identifier-1, identifier-2 | identifier-1 is converted from the native code page specified in the CODEPAGE compiler option only if input is from CONSOLE. | Assigning input from a screen or file (ACCEPT) |
| ADD | All identifiers can be numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL. identifier-3 (GIVING) can be numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL. | Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements | |
| CALL | identifier-2, identifier-3, identifier-4, identifier-5; literal-2, literal-3 | Passing data | |
| COMPUTE | identifier-1 can be numeric or numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL. arithmetic-expression can contain numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL. | Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements | |
| COPY . . . REPLACING | operand-1, operand-2 of the REPLACING phrase | Compiler-directing statements | |
| DISPLAY | identifier-1 | identifier-1 is converted to EBCDIC only if the CONSOLE mnemonic-name is specified directly or indirectly. | Displaying values on a screen or in a file (DISPLAY) |
| DIVIDE | All identifiers can be numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL. identifier-3 (GIVING) and identifier-4 (REMAINDER) can be numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL. | Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements | |
| INITIALIZE | identifier-1; identifier-2 or literal-1 of the REPLACING phrase | If you specify REPLACING NATIONAL or REPLACING NATIONAL-EDITED, identifier-2 or literal-1 must be valid as a sending operand in a move to identifier-1. | Examples: initializing data items |
| INSPECT | All identifiers and literals. (identifier-2, the TALLYING integer data item, can have USAGE NATIONAL.) | If any of these (other than identifier-2, the TALLYING identifier) have USAGE NATIONAL, all must be national. | Tallying and replacing data items (INSPECT) |
| INVOKE | Method-name as identifier-2 or literal-1; identifier-3 or literal-2 in the BY VALUE phrase | Invoking methods (INVOKE) | |
| MERGE | Merge keys | The COLLATING SEQUENCE phrase does not apply. | Setting sort or merge criteria |
| MOVE | Both the sender and receiver, or only the receiver | Implicit conversions are performed for valid MOVE operands. | Assigning values to elementary data items (MOVE) |
| MULTIPLY | All identifiers can be numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL. identifier-3 (GIVING) can be numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL. | Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements | |
| SEARCH ALL (binary search) | Both the key data item and its object of comparison | The key data item and its object of comparison must be compatible according to the rules of comparison. If the object of comparison is of class national, the key must be also. | Doing a binary search (SEARCH ALL) |
| SORT | Sort keys | The COLLATING SEQUENCE phrase does not apply. | Setting sort or merge criteria |
| STRING | All identifiers and literals. (identifier-4, the POINTER integer data item, can have USAGE NATIONAL.) | If identifier-3, the receiving data item, is national, all identifiers and literals (other than identifier-4, the POINTER identifier) must be national. | Joining data items (STRING) |
| SUBTRACT | All identifiers can be numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL. identifier-3 (GIVING) can be numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL. | Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements | |
| UNSTRING | All identifiers and literals. (identifier-6 and identifier-7, the COUNT and TALLYING integer data items, respectively, can have USAGE NATIONAL.) | If identifier-4, a receiving data item, has USAGE NATIONAL, the sending data item and each delimiter must have USAGE NATIONAL, and each literal must be national. | Splitting data items (UNSTRING) |
| XML GENERATE | identifier-1 (the generated XML document); identifier-2 (the source field or fields); identifier-4 or literal-4 (the namespace identifier); identifier-5 or literal-5 (the namespace prefix) | Producing XML output | |
| XML PARSE | identifier-1 (the XML document) | The XML-NTEXT special register contains national character document fragments during parsing. XML-NNAMESPACE and XML-NNAMESPACE-PREFIX special registers contain the associated namespace identifier and namespace prefix, if any, in national characters. | Processing XML input |
related tasks
Defining numeric data
Displaying numeric data
Using national data (Unicode) in COBOL
Comparing national (UTF-16) data
related references
CODEPAGE
Classes and categories of data (Enterprise COBOL Language Reference)