STRING

STRING {identifier-1 or literal-1} DELIMITED BY {identifier-2 or literal-2 or SIZE}...        INTO {identifier-3}        ON OVERFLOW [statements]        NOT ON OVERFLOW [statements]  END-STRING

STRING will move a series of strings into a destination string (from left to right without space filling). If the destination string is not large enough to hold all the source strings then this can be detected and acted on by the ON OVERFLOW condition. The DELIMITED word specifies the source string characters to be used:

    01 W-DAY      PIC XXX VALUE 'MON'.

    01 W-MONTH    PIC XXX VALUE '5  '.

    01 W-YEAR     PIC XXXX VALUE '2000;'.

      :



    STRING W-DAY DELIMITED BY SIZE

           '/' DELIMITED BY SIZE        

           W-MONTH DELIMITED BY SPACES

           '/' DELIMITED BY SIZE

           W-YEAR DELIMITED BY ';'

        INTO DATE-STRING

    END-STRING

The item DATE-STRING will contain "MON/5/2000".

  UNSTRING

UNSTRING {identifier-1 or literal-1} DELIMITED BY {identifier-2 or literal-2 or SIZE}...        INTO {identifier-3 COUNT IN identifier-4}...      TALLYING IN {identifier-5}      ON OVERFLOW [statements]      NOT ON OVERFLOW [statements]  END-UNSTRING

UNSTRING allows you to break up a string into small strings placed into new items:

    01 W-LONG-STRING   PIC X(50) VALUE 'Name;Address;Post Code'.

      :



    UNSTRING W-LONG-STRING DELIMITED BY ';' 

          INTO W-NAME COUNT IN CHARS-NAME

               W-ADDRESS COUNT IN CHARS-ADDR

               W-POST-CODE COUNT IN CHARS-PCODE

          

          TALLYING IN NUM-STRINGS-OUT

    END-UNSTRING

Here then string 'Name' will be placed into W-NAME, containing 4 characters, thus CHARS-NAME will contain the value of 4. Likewise for W-ADDRESS ('Address') CHARS-ADDR (7) etc... Notice how the ; character has been lost. Any character, including spaces can be used as a delimiter. TALLYING IN will count the number of items that were filled by the UNSTRING operation, in this case NUM-STRINGS-OUT will contain the value 3. Lastly, the ON OVERFLOW detects when each target of the UNSTRING operation has been used but there remains unused characters in the source string, e.g. if W-LONG-STRING contained 'Name;Address;Post Code;Country'.

  INSPECT

INSPECT {identifier-1} REPLACING CHARACTERS BY {identifier-2 or literal-1}        {BEFORE or AFTER} [INITIAL {identifier-3 or literal-2}]        {ALL or LEADING or FIRST} {identifier-4 or literal-3}        BY {identifier-5 or literal-4} {BEFORE or AFTER} INITIAL {identifier-6 or literal-5}

This form of INSPECT allows you to change characters within a string using the various options above.

INSPECT {identifier-1} TALLYING {identifier-2}        {BEFORE or AFTER} [INITIAL {identifier-3 or literal-2}]        {ALL or LEADING or FIRST} {identifier-4 or literal-3}        BY {identifier-5 or literal-4} {BEFORE or AFTER} INITIAL {identifier-6 or literal-5}

Here the source string is inspected and a tally of the number of characters defined (using the subsequent options) is held in {identifier-2}.