IBM Mainframe Forum

Dear all:

There was a question as below in my interview, could you please help to have a look how to achieve it? thanks a lot!

Question: How to convert the char variable with 2 bytes into HEX variable with 1 byte? (The input characters is just '0123456789ABCDEF'), for exeample, input is 'AB' and the output is X'AB'.

Method 1:
Use EVALUATE with 256 WHEN statements specified

Method 2:
Use a PIC S9(04) COMP-5 output variable
Redefine the output variable so you can access each byte separately
Use EVALUATE with 16 WHEN statements for the first byte of the input and compute the COMP-5 variable appropriately
Use EVALUATE with 16 WHEN statements for the second byte of the input and compute the COMP-5 variable appropriately
Move the redefined second byte of the COMP-5 variable to your final variable

Method 3:
Use the intrinsic function ORD with appropriate IF logic to convert the bytes of the input variable

These are suggestions -- there are other ways to do the conversion.

Various ways. For instance, each character represents the values 0-15. 0-9 map to 0-9, A-F map to 10-15.

The first digit is 16 times bigger (number base is 16, remember) than the one on the right.

Add 16 * "value from first character" to "value from second character" storing the result in a binary/comp/comp-4/comp-5 field of two bytes. Redefine the field so that the rightmost byte is PIC X.

DISPLAY that rightmost byte. Presto.

BillyBoyo wrote:Various ways. For instance, each character represents the values 0-15. 0-9 map to 0-9, A-F map to 10-15.

The first digit is 16 times bigger (number base is 16, remember) than the one on the right.

Add 16 * "value from first character" to "value from second character" storing the result in a binary/comp/comp-4/comp-5 field of two bytes. Redefine the field so that the rightmost byte is PIC X.

DISPLAY that rightmost byte. Presto.

Dear Robert / BillyBoyo ,Thank you very much for your kind response.

I'm late to the party but I'm beaten up by the statement

for exeample, input is 'AB' and the output is X'AB'.

- did it mean what it says? Please assist.

Anuj:

Input would be X'C1C2' ('AB') and output would be X'AB'

That make sense, Thanks Robert.

Thanks for saving me from forgetting all what I learned about HEXADECIMAL during college...!