You can compare the character values of two operands of class national.
Either operand (or both) can be any of the following types of items:
One of the operands can instead be a national literal or a national intrinsic function.
Use the NCOLLSEQ compiler option to determine which type of comparison to perform:
When you compare operands of unequal lengths, the shorter operand is treated as if it were padded on the right with default UTF-16 space characters (NX'0020') to the length of the longer operand.
When you compare operands of unequal lengths, the shorter operand is not extended with spaces because such an extension could alter the expected results for the locale.
The PROGRAM COLLATING SEQUENCE clause does not affect the comparison of two class national operands.
related concepts
National groups
related tasks
Using national groups
related references
NCOLLSEQ
National comparisons
(COBOL for Windows Language Reference)