COBOL Manual for TNS/E Programs (H06.08+, J06.03+)

Figurative Constants
Table 137 Figurative Constants
What It RepresentsFigurative Constant *
One or more of the character zero (0), depending on the contextZERO
ZEROS
ZEROES
One or more spaces, depending on the contextSPACE
SPACES
One or more of the character that has the highest position in the program collating sequence,
except in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph, where it represents the character that has the
HIGH-VALUE
HIGH-VALUES
highest position in the ASCII character set (the 256th character, which is all binary ones)
or in the national character set (default is hexadecimal FFFF)
One or more of the character that has the lowest position in the program collating sequence,
except in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph, where it represents the character that has the
LOW-VALUE
LOW-VALUES
lowest position in the ASCII character set (the first character, the NUL, which is all binary
zeros) or in the national character set (default is hexadecimal 0000)
One or more of the character quotation mark (")QUOTE
You cannot use either of these words instead of quotation marks to enclose a nonnumeric
literal
QUOTES
One or more of the character specified as the value of symbolic-character in the
SYMBOLIC CHARACTERS clause of the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph
symbolic-character
The value of literal must contain one or more of:ALL literal
• A nonnumeric literal
• A national literal
• A symbolic-character
• One of the other reserved words previously defined as figurative constants (except that
you cannot precede an ALL literal form of figurative constant with another ALL)
When literal is a nonnumeric literal or a national literal, this form implies repetition of
the literal’s value to the extent required by the context. For the other cases, the word ALL
is redundant and is used for readability only.
* Singular and plural forms are equivalent and can be used interchangeably.
PICTURE Character-Strings
Table 138 PICTURE Character-String Editing Characters
Editing OperationCharacter
Space insertionB
Zero suppressionZ
Zero0
Plus+
Minus-
CreditCR
DebitDB
Check protect*
Currency sign$
Comma or decimal point,
Character-Strings 1009