1) Read a line of 2000 characters and replace all SPACES with a single "+" plus character. i.e. Convert "A B" to "A+B" or "A B" to "A+B"
2)Read a line of 2000 characters, then search for a specific patterns like "PWD" or "INI" or etc and finally store next 6 characters into a variable.
3) Read a line of 2000 characters and store the last word in the string to a variable.
Edit:
I use Micro Focus COBOL.
This is a screenshot of my piece of code so far.
My code is below. It removes a few spaces but not all. Try writing any sentence with random numbers of spaces in between words in and input file for test-data.
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. SALAUT.
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
FILE-CONTROL.
SELECT IN-FILE ASSIGN TO "INFILE"
ORGANIZATION IS LINE SEQUENTIAL
FILE STATUS IS WS-IN-FILE-STATUS.
SELECT OUT-FILE ASSIGN TO "OUTFILE"
ORGANIZATION IS LINE SEQUENTIAL
FILE STATUS IS WS-OUT-FILE-STATUS.
DATA DIVISION.
FILE SECTION.
FD IN-FILE.
01 FS-IN-FILE PIC X(200).
FD OUT-FILE.
01 FS-OUT-FILE PIC X(200).
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 WS-ATMA-C.
03 WS-OUT-FILE-STATUS PIC X(02).
03 WS-IN-FILE-STATUS PIC X(02).
03 WS-LOOP-COUNTER PIC 9(03) VALUE 1.
03 WS-IN-EOF PIC X value 'N'.
03 WS-IN-FILE-LEN PIC 9(03).
03 WS-IN-SPACE-CNT PIC 9(03) VALUE 1.
03 FS-IN-FILE-2 PIC X(200).
03 WS-TRIL-SPACE-CNT PIC 9(03).
03 WS-TOT-SPACE-CNT PIC 9(03).
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
MAIN-PARA.
OPEN INPUT IN-FILE.
IF WS-IN-FILE-STATUS <> '00'
EXHIBIT 'IN-FILE-OPEN-ERROR : STOP-RUN'
EXHIBIT NAMED WS-IN-FILE-STATUS
PERFORM MAIN-PARA-EXIT
END-IF.
OPEN OUTPUT OUT-FILE.
IF WS-OUT-FILE-STATUS <> '00'
EXHIBIT 'OUT-FILE-OPEN-ERROR : STOP-RUN'
EXHIBIT NAMED WS-OUT-FILE-STATUS
PERFORM MAIN-PARA-EXIT
END-IF.
PERFORM SPACE-REMOVER-PARA THRU SPACE-REMOVER-PARA-EXIT.
CLOSE IN-FILE.
IF WS-IN-FILE-STATUS <> '00'
EXHIBIT 'IN-FILE-CLOSE-ERROR : STOP-RUN'
EXHIBIT NAMED WS-IN-FILE-STATUS
PERFORM MAIN-PARA-EXIT
END-IF.
CLOSE OUT-FILE.
IF WS-OUT-FILE-STATUS <> '00'
EXHIBIT 'IN-FILE-CLOSE-ERROR : STOP-RUN'
EXHIBIT NAMED WS-OUT-FILE-STATUS
PERFORM MAIN-PARA-EXIT
END-IF.
MAIN-PARA-EXIT.
STOP RUN.
SPACE-REMOVER-PARA.
PERFORM UNTIL WS-IN-EOF = 'Y'
INITIALIZE FS-IN-FILE FS-OUT-FILE WS-IN-FILE-LEN FS-IN-FILE-2
READ IN-FILE
AT END
MOVE 'Y' TO WS-IN-EOF
NOT AT END
INSPECT FS-IN-FILE TALLYING WS-IN-FILE-LEN FOR CHARACTERS
EXHIBIT NAMED WS-IN-FILE-LEN
MOVE 1 TO WS-LOOP-COUNTER
IF WS-IN-FILE-LEN <> 0
PERFORM UNTIL WS-IN-SPACE-CNT <= ZEROS
INSPECT FS-IN-FILE TALLYING WS-TOT-SPACE-CNT FOR ALL " "
INSPECT FUNCTION REVERSE (FS-IN-FILE) TALLYING
WS-TRIL-SPACE-CNT FOR LEADING " "
INITIALIZE WS-IN-SPACE-CNT
COMPUTE WS-IN-SPACE-CNT =
WS-TOT-SPACE-CNT - WS-TRIL-SPACE-CNT
PERFORM VARYING WS-LOOP-COUNTER FROM 1 BY 1
UNTIL WS-LOOP-COUNTER >=
WS-IN-FILE-LEN - (2 * WS-TRIL-SPACE-CNT)
IF FS-IN-FILE(WS-LOOP-COUNTER:2) = " "
STRING FS-IN-FILE(1:WS-LOOP-COUNTER - 1) DELIMITED BY SIZE
FS-IN-FILE(WS-LOOP-COUNTER + 2
: WS-IN-FILE-LEN - WS-LOOP-COUNTER - 2)
DELIMITED BY SIZE
INTO FS-IN-FILE-2
END-STRING
INITIALIZE FS-IN-FILE
MOVE FS-IN-FILE-2 TO FS-IN-FILE
INITIALIZE FS-IN-FILE-2
END-IF
END-PERFORM
INITIALIZE WS-LOOP-COUNTER WS-TRIL-SPACE-CNT WS-TOT-SPACE-CNT
END-PERFORM
WRITE FS-OUT-FILE FROM FS-IN-FILE
IF WS-OUT-FILE-STATUS <> '00'
EXHIBIT 'OUT-FILE-WRITE-ERROR : STOP-RUN'
EXHIBIT NAMED WS-OUT-FILE-STATUS
PERFORM MAIN-PARA-EXIT
END-IF
END-IF
END-READ
END-PERFORM.
SPACE-REMOVER-PARA-EXIT.
EXIT.
As INSPECT REPLACING only allows to replace the same number of bytes you can not use it. As Brian pointed out your COBOL runtime may comes with options like GnuCOBOL's FUNCTION SUBSTITUTE. In any case the question "Which COBOL" is still useful to be answered.
To do Thraydor's approach use UNSTRING to a table using a string pointer. Something along
MOVE 1 TO strpoint
PERFORM VARYING table-idx FROM 1 BY 1
UNTIL table-idx = table-max
UNSTRING your2000line DELIMITED BY ALL SPACES
INTO tmp-table (table-idx)
WITH POINTER strpoint
NOT ON OVERFLOW
EXIT PERFORM
END-UNSTRING
END-PERFORM
Another approach which always work is a simple PERFORM over the 2000 bytes with a bunch of IF your2000line (pos:1) statements (if possible: combine it to a single EVALUATE) checking byte by byte (comparing the last byte for removing the duplicate bytes) transferring the source with replacements to a temporary field and MOVE it back once you're finished
Please edit your question to show what exactly you've tried and you can get much better answers.
Firstly, bear in mind that COBOL is a language of dialects. There are also active commercial compilers which target the 1974, 1985, 2002 (now obsolete, incorporated in 2014) and 2014 Standards. All with their own Language Extensions, which may or many not be honoured in a different COBOL compiler.
If you are targeting your learning to a particular environment (IBM Mainframe COBOL you have said) then use that dialect as a subset of what is available to you in the actual COBOL you are using. Which means using the IBM Manuals.
Don't pick and chose stuff from places and use it just because it somehow seemed like a good idea at the time.
I have to admit that EXHIBIT was great fun to use, but it was only ever a Language Extension, and IBM dropped it by at least the later releases of OS/VS COBOL. It, like ON, was a "debugging" statement, although that didn't prevent their being used "normally". There's additional overhead to using EXHIBIT over a simple DISPLAY. IBM Enterprise COBOL only has a simple DISPLAY.
Whilst you may think it fun to use pictograms (the "oh my goodness, what symbol should I use for this" of a figure attempting to pull his own hair out) be aware that that particular symbol was a latecomer to the 2014 Standard, and if it appears in Enterprise COBOL within the next 20 to 50 years I'd be surprised (very low of the list of things to do, another cute way to write "not equal to" when many already exist, and COBOL even has an ELSE).
Some pointers. Don't have a procedure called "remove-all-the-spaces" if what it does is itself is "everything-including-install-a-new-kitchen-sink". Is it any wonder you can't find why it doesn't work?
Many, many, many COBOL programs have the task of reading a file, until the end, and processing the records in the file. Get yourself one of those working well first. Is that relevant to the "business process" the program is addressing? No, it's just technical stuff, which you can't do without so hide it somewhere. Where? in PERFORMed procedures (paragraphs or SECTIONS). Don't expect someone who quickly wants to know what your program is doing to want to read the stuff which every program does. Hide it.
You can find quite a bit of general advice here about writing COBOL programs. Pay attention to those which advise of the use of full-stops/periods, priming reads, and the general structure of COBOL programs.
It is very important to describe things accurately. Work on good, descriptive, accurate names for data-names and procedures. A file is a collection of records.
You have cut down the size of your data to make testing easier, without realising that you have a problem with your data-definitions when you go back to full-length data. Your "counters" can only hold three digits, when they need to be able to cope with the numbers up to 2000.
There is no point in doing something to a piece of data, and then immediately squishing that something with something else which is not related in any way to the original something.
MOVE SPACE TO B
MOVE A TO B
The first MOVE is redundant, superflous, and does nothing but suck up CPU time and confuse the next reader of your program. "Is there some code missing, because otherwise that's just plain dumb".
This is a variant of that example with the MOVE, and you are doing this all over the place:
INITIALIZE WS-IN-SPACE-CNT
COMPUTE WS-IN-SPACE-CNT =
WS-TOT-SPACE-CNT - WS-TRIL-SPACE-CNT
The INITIALIZE is a waste of space, resources, and an introducer of confusion, and extra lines of code to make your program more difficult to understand.
Also, don't "reset" things after they are used, so that they are "ready for next time". That creates dependencies which a future amender of your program will not expect. Even when expected/noticed, they make the code harder to follow.
Exactly what is wrong with your code is impossible to say without knowing what you think is wrong with it. For instance, there is not even a sign of a "+" replacing any spaces, so if you feel that is what it wrong, you simply haven't coded for it.
You've also only attempted one of the three tasks. If once of those not working is what you think is wrong...
Knowing what you think is wrong is one thing, but there are a lot of other problems. If you sit down and sort those out, methodically, then you'll come up with a "structurally" COBOL program which you'll find its easier to understand what your own code does, and where problems lie.
A B C D E
A+B+C+D+E
To get from the first to the second using STRING, look into Simon's suggestion to use WITH POINTER.
Another approach you could take would be using reference-modification.
Either way, you'd be build your result field a piece at a time
This field intentionally blank
A
A+B
A+B+C
A+B+C+D
A+B+C+D+E
Rather than tossing all the data around each time. There are also other ways to code it, but that can be for later.
Related
I'm building a COBOL program to calculate the average of up to 15 integers. The execution displays a number that is far bigger than intended with a lot of trailing zeroes. Here is the relevant code:
Data Division.
Working-Storage Section.
01 WS-COUNTER PIC 9(10).
01 WS-INPUT-TOTAL PIC 9(10).
01 WS-NEXT-INPUT PIC X(8).
01 WS-CONVERTED-INPUT PIC 9(8).
01 WS-AVG PIC 9(8)V99.
Procedure Division.
PROG.
PERFORM INIT-PARA
PERFORM ADD-PARA UNTIL WS-COUNTER = 15 OR WS-NEXT-INPUT = 'q'
PERFORM AVG-PARA
PERFORM END-PARA.
INIT-PARA.
DISPLAY 'This program calculates the average of inputs.'.
MOVE ZERO TO WS-COUNTER
MOVE ZERO TO WS-INPUT-TOTAL
MOVE ZERO TO WS-AVG.
ADD-PARA.
DISPLAY 'Enter an integer or type q to quit: '
ACCEPT WS-NEXT-INPUT
IF WS-NEXT-INPUT NOT = 'q'
MOVE WS-NEXT-INPUT TO WS-CONVERTED-INPUT
ADD WS-CONVERTED-INPUT TO WS-INPUT-TOTAL
ADD 1 TO WS-COUNTER
END-IF.
AVG-PARA.
IF WS-COUNTER > 1
DIVIDE WS-INPUT-TOTAL BY WS-COUNTER GIVING WS-AVG
DISPLAY 'Your average is ' WS-AVG '.' WS-NEXT-INPUT
END-IF.
The reason I put WS-NEXT-INPUT as alphanumeric and move it to a numeric WS-CONVERTED-INPUT if the IF condition is satisfied is because I want it to be able to take "q" to break the UNTIL loop, but after the condition is satisfied, I want a numeric variable for the arithmetical statements. Here's what it looks like with the numbers 10 and 15 as inputs:
10is program calculates the average of inputs.
Enter an integer or type q to quit:
15
Enter an integer or type q to quit:
q
Your average is 1250000000.
The console is a bit buggy so it forces me to input the 10 in that top left corner most of the time. Don't worry about that.
You see my problem in that execution. The result is supposed to be 00000012.50 instead of 1250000000. I tried inserting a few of my other variables into that display statement and they're all basically as they should be except for WS-INPUT-TOTAL which with that combination of numbers ends up being 0025000000 instead of 0000000025 as I would have expected. Why are these digits being stored in such a weird and unexpected way?
You have that strange output because of undefined behavior - computing with spaces.
The MOVE you present has the exact same USAGE and same size - it will commonly be taken over "as is", it normally does not convert the trailing spaces by some magic, so WS-CONVERTED-INPUT ends up with 10 . As the standard says for the move:
De-editing takes place only when the sending operand is a numeric-edited data item and the receiving item is a numeric or a numeric-edited data item.
and if it would be an edited field then it still should raise an exception on the MOVE:
When a numeric-edited data item is the sending operand of a de-editing MOVE statement and the content of that data item is not a possible result for any editing operation in that data item, the result of the MOVE operation is undefined and an EC-DATA-INCOMPATIBLE exception condition is set to exist.
When computing with spaces you commonly would raise a fatal error, but it seems your compile does not have that activated (and because you didn't share your compile command or even your compiler, we can't help with that).
Different COBOL dialects often use (partial only when checks are not activated which would lead to an abort) zero for invalid data, at least for spaces (but they can use everything. This will then lead to WS-CONVERTED-INPUT "seen as" 10000000 - so your computation will then include those big numbers.
So your program should work if you enter the necessary amount of leading zeroes on input.
General:
"never trust input data - validate" (and error or convert as necessary)
at least if something looks suspicious - activate all runtime checks available, re-try.
Solution - Do an explicit conversion:
MOVE FUNCTION NUMVAL(WS-NEXT-INPUT) TO WS-CONVERTED-INPUT, this will strip surrounding spaces and then convert from left to right until invalid data is found. A good coder would also check up-front using FUNCTION TEST-NUMVAL, otherwise you compute with zero if someone enters "TWENTY".
As I'm new to cobol, please help me with the below piece of code.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 BAS-REC.
02 INPT-REC.
49 INPT-LEN PIC S9(4) COMP.
49 INPT-TEXT PIC X(150).
02 INPT1-REC.
49 INPT1-LEN PIC S9(4) COMP.
49 INPT1-TEXT PIC X(150).
02 INPT2-REC.
49 INPT2-LEN PIC S9(4) COMP.
49 INPT2-TEXT PIC X(150).
77 VAR1 PIC X(5) VALUE 'APT'.
77 NUM1 PIC 9(1).
I'm using the level 49 for character varying here (to truncate trailing spaces)
Then I have cursor fetch.
After few modification under PROCEDURE DIVISION I'm doing the below.
PERFORM UNTIL SQLCODE=100
PERFORM VARYING NUM1 FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL NUM1=6
STRING INPT-REC DELIMITED BY ' ',' ',
VAR1 DELIMITED BY ' ',' '
NUM1 DELIMITED BY ' ' INTO INPT2-REC
EXEC SQL
insert query here (which will run 5 times)
END-EXEC
END- PERFORM
END- PERFORM
but in the table the data got inserted only once but it shold have got inserted 5 times and also the INPT2-REC hasn't been concatenated. The INPT2 -REC just contains the value of INPT-REC alone
My question is this a special characteristic of level 49 or am I wrong somewhere?
Note that if you use INPT-REC2 as a host-variable for a VARCHAR-field you will only see the part from INPT-REC since you never update the length-field: it still contains the length it was assigned from INPT-REC.
So you'll have to somehow get the actual length of INPT2-TEXT (e.g. INSPECT the REVERSE of INPT2-TEXT for LEADING SPACES) and move it to INPT2-LENGTH before your EXEC SQL.
As I already said in my comment: there is nothing special about level 49 - you could as well use 48, 33,30 or 05 with the same results. The samples in the DB2 manual probably use 49 since it is the last valid level-number without any special meaning, so it is least likely to cause problems with any level-numbers already used in the program.
As for the query being executed only once: in your loop you are varying NUM1 but are checking whether I=6 - since we don't see I anywhere in your example I can only guess that it is already equal to 6 upon entering the loop.
Level 49 can be treated specially when Embedded SQL is involved, depending on system; this text is copied from the IBM Knowledge Center
Host structure declarations in COBOL must satisfy the following requirements:
COBOL host structures can have a maximum of two levels, even though the host structure might occur within a structure with multiple levels. However, you can declare a varying-length character string, which must be level 49.
A host structure name can be a group name whose subordinate levels name elementary data items.
If you are using the DB2® precompiler, do not declare host variables or host structures on any subordinate levels after one of the following items:
A COBOL item that begins in area A
Any SQL statement (except SQL INCLUDE)
Any SQL statement within an included member
When the DB2 precompiler encounters one of the preceding items in a host structure, it considers the structure to be complete.
So, this seems like a little implementation detail (level 49 for var char) that may spill over into other implementations of COBOL ESQL. Like many details buried in systems, Knowing that would require knowing that.
This particular detail is news to me as of a few minutes ago.
Looking more just now, this came up in the esqlOC contribution for GnuCOBOL recently. A level 49 specific tweak to ensure there was no need to worry about little end big end storage between host and service. So it seems to be a thing.
And an answer to the original question is; depends on compiler environment and ESQL preprocessor, but yeah maybe level 49 fields can be used for VARCHAR.
i have string as ' #$rahul ' and i have to calculate number of alpha bates without using inspect verb. Also not using by ord clause for ASCII value. My instructor told me to use empty array but how it is used?? I tried but it counts for symbols also.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 WS-TABLE.
05 WS-A OCCURS 3 TIMES INDEXED BY I.
10 WS-B PIC A(2).
10 WS-C OCCURS 2 TIMES INDEXED BY J.
15 WS-D PIC X(3).
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
MOVE '####DEF34GHIJKL56MNOPQR' TO WS-TABLE.
PERFORM A-PARA VARYING I FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL I >3
STOP RUN.
A-PARA.
PERFORM C-PARA VARYING J FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL J>2.
C-PARA.
if ws-table(1) equals to spaces
continue
else
add +1 to ws-count
end-if
DISPLAY WS-C(I,J).
Apart from your table-definition and actual use of the table, you have basically got the idea already, except you are not sure what, specifically, to test for.
What you need to do is find the section in your COBOL documentation on class condition and class tests.
I suspect this bit of code:
if ws-table(1) equals to spaces
continue
else
add +1 to ws-count
end-if
Has been added in haste. With your data, ws-table(1) will never be space, and ws-count is not defined.
Back to your definition. You are defining a structure with three parts (WS-A OCCURS 3) each of which consists of a two-byte alphabetic field followed by two three-byte alphanumeric fields. That definition is of no direct use to your task.
01 the-data.
05 FILLER OCCURS 24 TIMES
INDEXED BY data-byte-index.
10 the-data-byte PIC X.
That will allow you to look at each byte individually. Note that you can always use good names, which will make your programs easier to understand, reduce the chance of careless errors, and make people's lives, including your own when you return to a program some time later, generally easier.
Note, you can also use reference-modification and lose out on the readability for the benefit of less typing.
Format of your program
Unless it is dictated to you (and although I've never seen it before in over 30 years, I have seen it a couple of time recently) there is absolutely no point in "indenting" things like the WORKKING-STORAGE section, or even paragraph/SECTION labels. They already have all the indentation they need, and further indentation adds nothing, which requiring more typing, and also causing experienced COBOL programmers to wonder why you are doing that.
Since the 1985 Standard for COBOL, the use of full-stops/periods in the PROCEDURE DIVISION is greatly relaxed. Since a full-stop/period in the wrong place can cause errors, this was a good thing. It will also be good if you take full advantage of it. Commas look far too much like full-stops/periods to be of any use in code. They never have to be there, so having them benefits nothing. Also noise-words like THEN can/should be avoided. Unlike commas, spacing can be a boon to the format of a program.
Here's your code above, reformatted:
MOVE '####DEF34GHIJKL56MNOPQR'
TO WS-TABLE
PERFORM A-PARA
VARYING I
FROM 1
BY 1
UNTIL I > 3
STOP RUN
.
A-PARA.
PERFORM C-PARA
VARYING J
FROM 1
BY 1
UNTIL J > 2
.
C-PARA.
if ws-table ( 1 ) equal to space
continue
else
add +1 to ws-count
end-if
DISPLAY
WS-C ( I J )
.
Use some proper names, and it's start to look like a real program.
Note, not all people agree on how a program should be formatted. Seriously.
With this code, I get
16: Perform stmnt not terminated by end-perform
33: syntax error, unexpected end-perform
Why is it saying that I need an end-perform and also not need it?
identification division.
program-id. xxx.
* will accept and display a num until 0 is called then
* asks to go again
data division.
file section.
working-storage section.
01 num pic 9(4).
01 hold pic 9(4).
01 another pic x.
procedure division.
perform until another = 'N' (line 16)
Display "Another Session (Y/N)? "
with no advancing
if another = 'Y'
Display "Enter a 4-digit unsigned number (0 to stop): "
with no advancing
accept num
move num to hold
perform until num = 0
Display "Enter a 4-digit unsigned number (0 to stop): "
with no advancing
accept num
if num <> 0
move num to hold
end-perform.
display space
Display "The last number entered: "hold
End-perform. (Line 33)
stop run.
end-perform.
display space
Display "The last number entered: "hold
End-perform. (Line 33)
It's that full-stop/period (Line 30) which is the killer.
Although since the 1985 Standard COBOL is much more relaxed about full-stops/periods, a single one will bring all current scopes screaming to a halt. You could have nesting 50 levels deep, and one single full-stop/period would end them all, in one fell swoop.
My advice is to use the absolute minimum of full-stop/periods in the PROCEDURE DIVISION.
That is: one to terminate the PROCEDURE DIVISION header; one to terminate each paragraph/SECTION label; one to terminate a paragrpah/SECTION; one to terminate a program (for a program with no paragraphs/SECTIONS). Also, if you have PROCEDURE DIVISION COPY or REPLACE statements, you'll need full-stops/periods to terminate those.
Except for the termination of the labels I put each full-stop/period on a line of its own, never attached to any code. I can then move code around and insert code without worrying about whether I need to add/remove a full-stop/period.
As to why you need END-PERFORM, it is an "inline PERFORM". Syntactically, an inline PERFORM requires an END-PERFORM, but your use of the full-stop/period caused termination of the PERFORM scope before the END-PERFORM was located, so the error on line 16. Subsequently an END-PERFORM unconnected to a PERFORM was located, so the error on line 33.
It is important when putting error messages in your questions that you include the error message exactly as you see it. Copy/paste, don't re-trype, please. Include any message numbers, as well.
You absolutely can not mix the full stop "." scope terminator from Cobol-74 with the End-* scope terminators from Cobol-85.
The difference is that the full stop "." terminates ALL scopes.
The End-* terminates only the most recent scope, just like you might expect.
Putting a "." in the middle of code with End-* is kinda like dropping a nuclear bomb in the middle of it. As a rule, for compilers made in the last quarter century or so, a period should only occur in the procedure division at the end of a paragraph name, or at the end of a paragraph (and sections too, but those are useless in an age where segmentation and overlays are managed by the operating system). I like to use "EXIT." or "CONTINUE." just to highlight that I'm using one of the bad-nasty-best-avoided-periods in the procedure division.
My problem is, given a variable which I read from a file, see if it contains or matches another string.
In other words, find in a file all the records whose variable
BRADD PIC X(30)
matches or contains a string introduced by keyboard.
I'm very confident this problem is resolved through the INSPECT instruction, and I've tried something like this in my code:
READ BRANCHFILE NEXT RECORD
AT END SET EndOfFile TO TRUE
END-READ.
PERFORM UNTIL EndOfFile
INSPECT BBRADD
TALLYING CONT for CHARACTERS
BEFORE INITIAL CITY
IF CONT>1
DISPLAY " BRANCH CODE :" BBRID
DISPLAY " BRANCH NAME :" BBRNAME
DISPLAY " BRANCH ADDRESS :" BBRADD
DISPLAY " PHONE :" BBRPH
DISPLAY " E-MAIL :" BEMAIL
DISPLAY " MANAGER NAME :" BMGRNAME
DISPLAY " ------------------"
DISPLAY " ------------------"
END-IF
READ BRANCHFILE NEXT RECORD
AT END SET EndOfFile TO TRUE
END-READ
MOVE 0 TO CONT
END-PERFORM.
Where CITY is the variable I introduce through keyboard.
¿Anyone knows how to find a "substring" in a "string"?
For example, if I introduced "Zaragoza" my program have to print all the records in the file which variable BBRADD contains "Zaragoza".
01 BRANCHREC.
88 EndOfFile VALUE HIGH-VALUE.
02 BBRID PIC X(6).
02 BBRNAME PIC X(15).
02 BBRADD PIC X(30).
02 BBRPH PIC X(10).
02 BEMAIL PIC X(20).
02 BMGRNAME PIC X(25).
You would need to set CONT to zero before the INSPECT, every time.
CONT just gets updated from its initial value when the INSPECT starts. After you find your first one, every record will look like it has CITY in it.
If may initially seem odd that it works that way, but if it didn't you'd be limited on the occasions when that is how you want it to work.
Ah, looking a little closer, you are setting CONT to an initial value, you are just doing it in an unexpected place. If it needs to be zero, set it to zero immediately before it should be zero. Much easier to find, less easy for someone changing the program in the future to make a mess of.
However, you have another problem. Let's say CITY is PIC X(20). The user enters SEVILLA and your INSPECT will now search for SEVILLA followed by 13 spaces. Ideally you'd want SEVILLA followed by one space.
You need to be able to test for a value that the user has entered, with a trailing blank, but not more.
The current popular way to do this is with reference-modification.
You need to take your user-input, find out how many trailing spaces it contains, calculate how long the data is, add one for the trailing blank, and hold that value in a field (preferably a BINARY field).
Then your INSPECT can look like this:
INSPECT BBRADD
TALLYING CONT for CHARACTERS
BEFORE INITIAL CITY ( 1 : length-of-data-plus-one )
However, then you have a problem if SEVILLA is actually in the start of the field.
So you make a small change, not to count characters which appear before it, but to count occurrences of it.
INSPECT BBRADD
TALLYING CONT for ALL
CITY ( 1 : length-of-data-plus-one )
Many people will instead code a PERFORM loop with reference-modification and do the test that way. With the final version of the INSPECT above have to code the termination logic yourself. For learning purposes it would be good to do it both ways.
When doing file-io, always use and check the FILE STATUS. Put your READ into a paragraph and perform it, you don't need two different pieces of code. If you use the FILE STATUS you don't need the AT END (or the END-READ) as the field you use to receive the FILE STATUS value will be "10" for end-of-file. Just use your 88 on that field, with the value of "10".
The Edit on your question now indicates where your existing 88-level is.
On the one hand, this is a good idea, because the end-of-file is associated with the record, and there can be no valid accidental content.
On the other hand, this is not a "portable" solution: if you use other COBOLs you may find that once end-of-file is reached it is no longer valid to access data under the FD. In the standard what happens in this situation is not defined, so you get differences amongst compilers.
You can retain the 88 on the group-item had have it portable by using READ ... INTO ... and having your record-layout in WORKING-STORAGE. This takes slightly longer to execute, as the data has to be transferred from one location to another.
I prefer the 88 on the FILE STATUS field and simplify the READ by being able to remove the AT END and END-READ. I already can't access the record-area under the FD so I can't accidentally get wrong values which look good.