IBM Mainframe Forum

by **xboss** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 3:34 am

Learning COBOL Programming 101.

Below is my program. I am trying to determine if the value user keyed in is NUMERIC or not. BALANCE-INPUT that accepts user input is defined as type VARCHAR. Irrespective of the type of input I key in, same result "INVALID BALANCE. SHOULD BE NUMERIC VALUE".

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IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
*--------------------
PROGRAM-ID. INTCHECK.
*--------------------
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
*--------------------
DATA DIVISION.
*-------------
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
*-----------------------
01 ACCEPT-INPUT.
02 BALANCE-INPUT PIC X(10).
02 AMOUNT-INPUT PIC S9(5)V99 USAGE IS COMP-3.

PROCEDURE DIVISION.
*------------------
BEGIN.
DISPLAY 'ENTER AMOUNT TO DEPOSIT'
ACCEPT BALANCE-INPUT
STRING BALANCE-INPUT DELIMITED BY SPACES INTO BALANCE-INPUT
IF BALANCE-INPUT IS NUMERIC
COMPUTE AMOUNT-INPUT = FUNCTION NUMVAL(BALANCE-INPUT)
DISPLAY 'IS NUMERIC'
DISPLAY AMOUNT-INPUT
ELSE
DISPLAY 'INVALID BALANCE. SHOULD BE NUMERIC VALUE'
DISPLAY BALANCE-INPUT
END-IF.
GOBACK.

by **Terry Heinze** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 3:49 am

I believe the ACCEPT verb as written defaults to whatever you have following the SYSIN DD statement, so the user is not being given the chance to key in anything. See the ACCEPT verb in the Language Reference Manual. Please post your JCL.

by **Terry Heinze** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 3:52 am

Also, VARCHAR is a DB2 term, not COBOL. BALANCE-INPUT is a 10-byte elementary item.

by **xboss** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 3:59 am

Terry,
This is interactive program, my input is coming from user as below. Sorry I should have used term "alphanumeric" instead of "Varchar".

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ENTER AMOUNT TO DEPOSIT
100
INVALID BALANCE. SHOULD BE NUMERIC VALUE

by **Robert Sample** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 4:30 am

COBOL tends to be picky about variables. When you code BALANCE-INPUT as PIC X(10), every input line you provide needs to be 10 bytes (0000000100 for your sample instead of 100) or your BALANCE-INPUT variable will not be numeric. One way this can be handled is by using intrinsic function NUMVAL to convert the data to a numeric value.

by **BillyBoyo** » Sat Dec 21, 2013 5:59 am

Except if non-number-format data is typed, NUMVAL will abend.

IBM Mainframe Forum

Check if input value is type INTEGER?

Check if input value is type INTEGER?

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Re: Check if input value is type INTEGER?

Re: Check if input value is type INTEGER?

Re: Check if input value is type INTEGER?

Re: Check if input value is type INTEGER?