Any numeric variable (USAGE DISPLAY, COMP, COMP-1, COMP-2, COMP-3, COMP-4, or COMP-5) can be moved to a COMP-3 variable with only truncation and overflow issues possible, depending upon the PICTURE clauses involved.

1. it possible to move a comp-3 field to a comp field or display field and vice versa.. 2. it possible to redefine a field with comp-3 status to a comp status.

You cannot move a COMP-3 variable to alphanumeric directly. It will not give a SOC7 error but will you give you a return code 12 stating that comp-3 and alphanumeric variables did not follow the move compatibility rule. 01 A1 PIC S9(4) COMP-3 VALUE 1234.

Yes. Cobol allows to move Alphanumeric variables to numeric variables. Alphabetic to numeric move is not alllowed.

Comp is a binary usage, while comp-3 indicates packed decimal. The other common usages are binary and display. IBM Mainframes are typically binary and AS400’s are packed. ‘

COMP-3 data stored in memory higher to lower in the size of nibble (4 bits). i.e. The upper nibble stores the most significant digit and lower nibble stores the next digit and the upper nibble stores the next digit etc.

In the below file, the last 2 Bytes are COMP-3 Data. You read the Hexa-decimal value in a top-down fashion. 3. You may also DISPLAY this in COBOL, by first MOVE’ing the data to a Numeric-Edited DISPLAY Format Variable.

USAGE IS DISPLAY The data item is stored in ASCII format and each character will take 1 byte. It is default usage and a data item is stored in a couple of contiguous bytes.

To change this to readable format, you need to convert these numbers into ZONED Decimal (ZD) format. This can be accomplished using SORT. p,m,BI,TO=ZD converts the BI values to ZD values. By default, a 4-byte BI value produces a 10-byte ZD value, but LENGTH=6 override the default length to produce a 6-byte ZD value.

RE: Converting alphanumeric field to numeric Try: 01 alpha-field PIC X(4) VALUE “1234”. 01 numeric-field PIC 9(4). MOVE alpha-field(1:4) TO numeric-field(1:4).

The S0C7 abend can be avoided by appropriately checking every numeric value before using it in calculations. It is one of the few completely avoidable system errors, if the programmer uses the right techniques.

Your knowledge is WRONG. Any numeric variable (USAGE DISPLAY, COMP, COMP-1, COMP-2, COMP-3, COMP-4, or COMP-5) can be moved to a COMP-3 variable with only truncation and overflow issues possible, depending upon the PICTURE clauses involved. You generally cannot move PIC X variables to a COMP-3 variable, but in some special cases even that can work.

Both are assumed USAGE DISPLAY. Now when you do a group level move from SUB-STRUCT-1 to a COMP-3 (Packed Decimal) you effectively tell the compiler not to convert from DISPLAY to COMP-3 format. And that is what you get. Try the following modifications to your code. Using REDEFINES creates a numeric elementary item for the move.

Beware: Moving character data into a COMP-3 field may give you the dreaded SOC7 data exception abend when the receiving item is referenced. This is because not all bit patterns are valid COMP-3 numbers. You have 2 Issues. COBOL has several Numeric Data Structures.

Assuming that the PIC X variable does have nothing but numeric digits, your best bet is a two-step move: move the PIC X to USAGE DISPLAY variable, then move the USAGE DISPLAY variable to the COMP-3 variable. This will allow COBOL to handle the conversion between the PIC X internal storage format and the COMP-3 internal storage format.