IBM Mainframe Forum

hi,
i have some 2 questions about c2x function,as follow:

first:
say C2X('123') --------- F1F2F3
say C2X('123'X) ---------0123 (what does the x mean,how this result come out?)

Second:
num1 pix 999 comp-3 value 123.[num1 is part of a record in a ps file]
say C2X(num1) --------- 123F (pls, help explain the behind reason, how this result come out?)

thanks!

thanks for reply!

> what does the x mean,how this result come out?

'123'x is a hex number.

'123' is a character string.

x means hex so it is passing a hex string in, character format, to C2X and is getting the hex representation back i.e. 2 bytes padded with leading zeros but in readable (character) format. Probably a bad use of C2X and possibly not one that was envisaged by Mike Cowlishaw - althoough it does not break the interpreter.