"USER WORD 'CHAR-COUNT' IS MULTI-DEFINED." error not sure what means 1

[scottmitchell]

Anyone who can shed some light on this error, I'd love to hear from you!

I have a variable in working storage called "char-count" and I have it as an index for several tables, and also present in some procedure code as follows:

PERFORM PROCESS-CHAR VARYING CHAR-COUNT FROM 1 BY 1
UNTIL CHAR-COUNT > 60.

I get an compile error for this line of code saying,

"DECODE.COB 103: JMN2504I-S USER WORD 'CHAR-COUNT' IS MULTI-DEFINED."

What can I check to get rid of this error?

Thanks!

Scott

 

[MKuiper]

Hi,

there must be two or more declarations for CHAR-COUNT.

like this:

03 XXX.
05 CHAR-COUNT PIC 9(09) COMP.
03 YYY.
05 CHAR-COUNT PIC 9(09) COMP.

The line "MOVE 0 TO CHAR-COUNT" will generate this error because the compiler doesn't know which of the two is meant.

Solution 1: Give one of the CHAR-COUNT fields a different name.
Solution 2: Use the "IN" word, like : "MOVE 0 TO CHAR-COUNT IN XXX."
Marcel

 

[Dimandja]

Hi scottmitchell,

Could it also be that the name char-count is already used to define an index? Index declarations appear in the phrase INDEXED BY, not as elementary items. Use a different name for your WORKING STORAGE char-count (it is a subscript, not an INDEX).

Dimandja

 

[scottmitchell]

thanks guys for your input...

I did some reading and found that, as Dimandja had pointed out, I had used it more than once to define multiple indexes. Problem solved!

Thanks so much for your input!

Sincerely,

S. Mitchell

 

[3gm]

While not recommended, you can qualify a duplicate index name. e.g.

05  XXX OCCURS 10 TIMES INDEXED BY IDX PIC X.
05  YYY OCCURS 10 TIMES INDEXED BY IDX PIC X.
.
.
.
     PERFORM PROCESS-CHAR VARYING IDX OF XXX FROM 1 BY 1
            UNTIL IDX OF XXX > 60
[\code]
Glenn