The '85 Standard didn't include "national" data types, so the issue that IBM was TRYING to fix wasn't defined there. However, the '02 Standard (page 814 says
"The comparison associated with each WHEN phrase is executed in accordance with the rules specified for conditional expressions. (See 8.8.4, Conditional expressions.)" I would have EXPECTED the same to apply in the '85 Standard, just with no requirement to handle NATIONAL data types. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.. . > Anyone know what the Cobol 'standard' has to say on the subject? > > -----Original Message----- > Clark Morris > > The thing that is baffling me in this discussion is how "ABCD" could > ever have been considered = "ABCDEF" in a COBOL comparison of unequal > length operands because my understanding of all COBOL comparison is that > the shorter operand is extended with spaces if the description is > non-numeric and by zeros so that numeric operands have effectively the > same number of digits and decimal places. Thus 1234 would equal both > 1234.00 and 0001234 but neither 31234 nor 1234.3. This would be true > for both IF statements and SEARCH WHEN conditions. Have I misunderstood > the COBOL standard? Would you want your programs to work according to > some other rule? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
