iTS 1.0+)

Data Division

Compaq NonStop™ Pathway/iTS SCREEN COBOL Reference Manual—426750-001

5-8

JUSTIFIED Clause

The JUSTIFIED clause causes nonstandard positioning of data within a receiving item.

The clause can only appear in the data description of an elementary item; the clause

cannot be used for a data item that is described as numeric.

When the JUSTIFIED clause is omitted, standard alignment rules dictate that alignment

is left justified and truncation or padding, when necessary, occurs on the right.

When a receiving data item is described with the JUSTIFIED clause, the standard

alignment rules do not apply. If a sending item is too big for the receiving item, the

sending item is truncated on the left. If the sending item is smaller than the receiving

item, the rightmost character of the sending item is aligned with the rightmost character

of the receiving field and the value is extended to the left with space characters.

Right justification does not strip trailing blanks from the sending field. Suppose, for

example, that the Working-Storage Section includes:

01 WS-FIELD-1 PIC X(12)

01 WS-FIELD-2 PIC X(14) JUSTIFIED RIGHT.

In addition, in the Screen Section a field is defined as:

05 SCREEN-FIELD-1 PIC X(10)

USING WS-FIELD-1.

Suppose the user enters “ABCDEFGHIJ” into SCREEN-FIELD-1, presses a valid

function key, and an ACCEPT statement causes data to be moved into WS-FIELD-1.

The data is then moved from WS-FIELD-1 to WS-FIELD-2 using the MOVE statement.

As a result of this sequence of operations, the three fields then appear as follows:

SCREEN-FIELD-1 = "ABCDEFGHIJ" (ten bytes)

WS-FIELD-1 = "ABCDEFGHIJ " (twelve bytes)

WS-FIELD-2 = " ABCDEFGHIJ " (fourteen bytes)

Although right justification and leading-blank padding have occurred, trailing blanks

from the input field were not stripped. Trailing blanks can be stripped from screen input

fields during the execution of an ACCEPT statement by means of an alphanumeric input

user conversion routine. Alternatively, logic for stripping trailing blanks can be

included in a server program.

OCCURS Clause

The OCCURS clause defines tables and other sets of repeating items, thus eliminating

the need for separate item entries. These tables can be a fixed number of elements or

can vary within given limits. An OCCURS clause cannot be used in an 01 level entry.

{ JUST } RIGHT

{ JUSTIFIED }

Note. The JUSTIFIED clause is ignored when an item with the literal given in a VALUE clause

is initialized.