RE: [open-cobol-list] invalid VALUE clause

[William M. Klein]

You are correct that numeric-edited items must have alphanumeric literals in
their value clause (and I was in error).  There is a "relevant note" on page
370 of the 2002 Standard which says, 

"NOTE The programmer is responsible for specifying the numeric-edited, or
national-edited item in edited form."

But as that is ONLY a note, the compiler certainly is not required to
"restrict" VALUE clauses to those that match the picture clause.  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden On 
> Behalf Of Keisuke Nishida
> Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 3:24 AM
> To: William M. Klein
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [open-cobol-list] invalid VALUE clause
> 
> At Tue, 10 Feb 2004 16:15:29 -0600,
> William M. Klein wrote:
> > 
> > Using Z's makes a numeric field a numeric-edited field, not 
> an alphanumeric
> > or alphanumeric-edited field. (The same is true about using 
> the BLANK WHEN
> > ZERO clause).
> > 
> > The reason that a VALUE SPACE is invalid relates to the 
> MOVE rules which (in
> > the '85 Standard - on page VI-104) states,
> 
> It seems different rules are applied between the VALUE clause and
> the MOVE statement.  According to the COBOL 2002 standard,
> 
> | ISO/IEC 1989:2002
> | 13.16.61 VALUE clause
> | 13.16.61.2 4) If the item is of class alphabetic or alphanumeric,
> | literals in the VALUE clause shall be alphanumeric literals. [...]
> 
> Note that the class of a numeric-edited field is alphanumeric,
> though the category of it is numeric-edited.  Thus, the VALUE clause
> of a numeric-edited field must be an alphanumeric literal, and the
> value SPACE would be legal here (even though it is not desirable).
> 
> Furthermore, as far as I can understand, the standard requires the
> compiler *not* to check the value whether it matches to the picture
> definition.  For example, the following definition is legal:
> 
>   01 X PIC ZZ9 VALUE "abc".
> 
> On the other hand, the MOVE statement requires numeric values to be
> stored in numeric-edited items, and SPACE would be illegal here.
> 
> I'll fix this problem so that SPACE can be accepted.
> 
> Keisuke
> 
> 
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