HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Data Items NCHAR Data Items There is a class of dataadditional to the classes described in the chapter Concepts of the COBOL Language in your Language Reference: NCHAR. It includes two data categories: NCHAR and NCHAR-EDITED. A data item of class NCHAR can be described by using the USAGE NCHAR or USAGE JAPANESE clause. An item with this clause can have only the characters "N", "B", "/" or "0" in its PICTURE character-string. An item whose PICTURE character-string is all "N"s is of category NCHAR, an item whose PICTURE character-string contains both "N" and "B", "/" or "0" is of category NCHAR-EDITED. Note that each "N", "B", "/" or "0" represents one 2-byte character position. Except where otherwise stated, the length of the data item for all purposes is the number of "N"s, "B"s, "/"s and "0"s in its PICTURE character-string. For reference modification, the leftmost-character-position and length specify the number of DBCS characters, not bytes. Data items of class NCHAR can be used wherever data items of class alphanumeric can be used, subject to rules and exceptions given in the appropriate places in this chapter. Mixed Data DBCS characters can be included in datastored in data items of category alphanumeric. In such data, SBCS characters are represented by SBCS codes and DBCS characters by DBCS codes. Each space character is represented by the SBCS code for space. In operations within the program the data are treated as ordinary alphanumeric data. It is the programmer's responsibility to ensure that the two halves of a DBCS code do not get separated. The length of the data item for all purposes is its length in bytes when stored in machine memory.