LINE SEQUENTIAL FILE RECORD LENGTH

[AustinOne]

It appears that in our ancient MicroFocus COBOL Windows/DOS environment, when you have a file defined as LINE SEQUENTIAL (records delimited by carriage-return, line-feed), with a minimal FD and no RECORD CONTAINS clause:

1... when you READ a record that is shorter than what is defined by the "01" record description... it pads out the remaining positions with spaces (not surprising to me).

2... when you READ a record that is longer than what is defined by the "01" record description... it reads up to the the number of characters defined by the record description... and the remaining characters will be read by the next READ as if that were the next record.

My question is: I am curious as to whether this behavior is part of the COBOL "Standard" or is implementor defined.

Thanks

 

[k5tm]

Implementor defined.

Of course, line sequential itself is an implementor defined extension adopted by most of the COBOL non-mainframe COBOL vendors.

Tom Morrison
Micro Focus

 

[webrabbit]

Now supported by IBM mainframe compile also.

 

[AustinOne]

Thanks for your answers, guys!