Rational Developer for System z
COBOL for Windows, Version 7.5, Programming Guide


COBOL statements and national data

You can use national data with the PROCEDURE DIVISION and compiler-directing statements shown in the table below.

Table 18. COBOL statements and national data
COBOL statement Can be national Comment For more information
ACCEPT identifier-1, identifier-2 identifier-1 is converted from the code page indicated by the runtime locale only if input is from the terminal. 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 the code page associated with the current locale. 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, if you specify NCOLLSEQ(BIN) 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)

Assigning values to group 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, if you specify NCOLLSEQ(BIN) 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)   Producing XML output
XML PARSE identifier-1 (the XML document) The XML-NTEXT special register contains national character document fragments during parsing.  Processing XML input

related tasks
Defining numeric data
Displaying numeric data
Using national data (Unicode) in COBOL
Comparing national (UTF-16) data

related references
NCOLLSEQ
Classes and categories of data (COBOL for Windows Language Reference)


Terms of use | Feedback

Copyright IBM Corporation 1996, 2008.
This information center is powered by Eclipse technology. (http://www.eclipse.org)