Byte usage of PIC S9 1

[drexan]

I need to know how many bytes does a PIC S9(09) occupy. Does the sign count as one byte? Thank you for your reply.

 

[Crox]

Hi,

The sign does not occupy a byte.

On the mainframe a value of +123 means x'f1f2c3', -123 is x'f1f2d3', value 123 in an unsigned field is x'f1f2f3'

 

[Idiot]

Hi Crox !
What are these f1f2f3? what does the f stands for?Also in this convention how does 0 represented?
please pardon me if you see this as a silly question.

Thanks

 

[BettyScherber]

The F's in this description are hexademical F's. In EBCDIC on the IBM mainframe, the internal code for the characters 0-9 are F0-F9. (In ASCII, it's 30-39.) Since the F's (or 3's) aren't really conveying any useful information when we already know that the field is being treated as a number, the F (or 3) from the high-order half-byte of the last character of the field is changed to a different value to indicate the sign, positive or negative. That is why the S in the picture clause does not take up any additional room. Hope this helps.

Betty Scherber
Brainbench MVP for COBOL II

http://www.brainbench.com

 

[MiggyD]

BettyScherber,

I've just recently started learning COBOL. Thanks very much for that explanation. Here's a Tip Vote from me.
"When the night has been to lonely, and the road has been too long." then you need to go to bed. (Quote is from the movie/soundtrack "The Rose&quot

 

[HRayT]

signed characters of 7-9 ie S9(7) through S9(9) takes 4 bytes
unsigned characters of 9(8) and 9(9) take 4 bytes

 

[Greenguy71]

Actually HRayT, a picture clause of S9(7) will occupy 7 bytes, as well as PIC S9(9) taking up 9 bytes. This is the case unless the numeric fields are defined as comp or comp-3, etc.

 

[HRayT]

You are very much correct greenguy, converting from comp to character was assumed.

 

[Greenguy71]

Then the previous post was only half correct....a picture clause of S9(7) will take 4 bytes, however, a picture clause of S9(9) will take 5 bytes....