Howard, Instead of trying to read in a "printed report" on file and parsing my way through all the extraneous stuff like page heading lines, total lines, blank lines etc. to get to the meat of the information, I would ask for the input file that created the report in the first place. Processing a data file is, IMHO, a lot less error prone than parsing my way through a printed report. OK, it can be done and I have done it, too, if I had no other choice. But I prefer not to do so. And you can bet money on the fact that a few months or years later, the report format changes because someone modified the report program and then your program goes down in flames ... that's probably going to cause a 3am phone call from a panicked operator ... I like to avoid that kind of disturbances. Alternatively, if you cannot process the input file, for whatever the reason, try and see if you can get a data file containing the needed information. Change (or have someone change) the report program to also output a data file with the information that you are looking for and then process that data file instead of the "printed report" file.
Regards, Ulrich Krueger -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Howard Brazee Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 09:46 To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU Subject: How would you read a report? What would be the cleanest way to have a CoBOL program read a report file // DCB=(RECFM=FB,LRECL=133,DSORG=PS) Would you copy it first, changing its format? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
