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

In general, you can use a national literal anywhere you can use a nonnumeric literal. Exceptions
are:
• A national literal cannot be compared to a nonnumeric or numeric literal or to a data item
not defined as national. Compare national literals only to other national literals or national
data items.
• A national literal cannot be specified in these paragraphs, statements, phrases, or clauses:
SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph◦
◦ PADDING clause of the SELECT statement
◦ RECEIVE-CONTROL paragraph
◦ INITIALIZE statement when the REPLACING phrase is used
◦ INSPECT statement
◦ As literal-1 or literal-2 of the REPLACING phrase of a COPY statement
• If national literals and national data items are used for items in a STRING statement (delim-1,
delim-2, result, or delim-store ), all the items must be national literals or national
data items.
Figurative Constants
A figurative constant is a character-string that has a value the compiler generates from one of the
reserved words in the first column of Table 13. The value it generates depends on the context in
which the figurative constant appears.
In general, you can use a figurative constant wherever the syntax rules of the language require or
permit a literal. The exceptions to this rule are:
• When the literal must be a numeric literal, the only acceptable figurative constant is [ALL]
ZERO[[E]S] (which generates the numeric value 0). The other forms of figurative constant
always generate a nonnumeric value; therefore, such forms are not acceptable when the
context requires a numeric value.
• There are certain contexts in which you cannot use figurative constants whose source form
includes the word ALL. When this is the case, the usage considerations for that particular
language element’s syntax mention the usage restriction.
• The COBOL language includes several constructs where a literal cannot be any figurative
constant. When this is the case, the usage considerations for that particular language element’s
syntax mention the usage restriction.
• When SPACE, QUOTE, or ZERO is applied to a national data item, the class of the figurative
literal is national. The 2-byte value of the national character set that corresponds to SPACE,
QUOTE, or ZERO when the program is compiled is used. For LOW-VALUES and HIGH-VALUES,
the highest and lowest positions in the collating sequence are assumed.
When a figurative constant represents a nonnumeric or national value, that value is a string of one
or more characters. The compiler determines the length of the string according to these rules:
• When you associate a figurative constant with a data item (for example, by moving the
figurative constant to the data item or by comparing them or using the figurative constant in
a VALUE clause), the compiler repeats the figurative constant value character by character
until its size equals or exceeds the size of the data item. The compiler then truncates the
resultant string from the right end until it has the same number of character positions as the
74 Language Elements