IBM Mainframe Forum

I need to populate spaces in the numeric field in the cobol program?
What are the possible way to done that?

Hello,

You do understand that your query is absurd if taken verbatim; because it goes against the rules of basic COBOL variable assignment.

If you REALLY DO have a requirement of initializing a field, which is inherently NUMERIC, with SPACEs - then the best bet you have is - modify the attribute of the numeric field to alphanumeric; because with NUMERIC, afa I know spaces dont work; or unless you are able to work something out with REDEFinitions. But I'd leave it to you to read the manual and UNDERSTAND the basic variable definition attributes.

A "numeric" variable in COBOL may be USAGE DISPLAY or COMP or COMP-1 through COMP-5 and depending upon the USAGE, what you want to do may work in a way you don't expect or it may generate a compiler error.

As previously stated, this is generally not a good idea.
One way to accomplish what you want is:

But again -- not a good idea.

Yep, what Terry suggested does that trick.
And if you really want to cross-check your 'MOVE' result, you can validate if WS-NUMERIC-DEFINITION = SPACES or not.

I hope that we do understand that we are not actually moving spaces to a 'numeric field', as requested, but to an 'alphanumeric group variable'; and then referring that field using a 'variable name' which has numeric attributes; which is different from the query: populate spaces in the numeric field in the cobol program

Or maybe I've missed the fine-print somewhere.

No Aki88 - you have read the fine print just fine. The others have taken the view that, being a beginner, the TS did not know how to frame the question properly. Hopefully, from now on TS will be able to think a little bit more about the phrasing of their questions.

pranav283,

Not necessarily. Depends on your compile options.