STRING

STRING command is used to concatenate one or more strings.

Syntax:

          STRING identifier-1 / literal-1, identifier-2/ literal-2

          DELIMITED BY (identifier-3/literal-3/SIZE)

          INTO identifier-4

          END-STRING.

 01 VAR1 PIC X(10) VALUE ‘MUTHU    ‘

 01 VAR2 PIC X(10) VALUE ‘SARA      ‘

 01 VAR2 PIC X(20).

To get display ‘MUTHU,SARA’

          STRING VAR1 DELIMITED BY ‘ ‘

                   ‘,’ DELIMITED BY SIZE

                    VAR2 DELIMITED BY ‘ ‘

              INTO VAR3

          END-STRING.  

The receiving field must be an elementary data item with no editing symbols and JUST RIGHT clause.

With STRING statement, specific characters of a string can be replaced whereas MOVE replaces the full string.

01 AGE-OUT PIC X(12) VALUE ’12 YEARS OLD’.

STRING ‘18’ DELIMITED BY SIZE INTO AGE-OUT.  => 18 YEARS OLD.

Reference Modification – equivalent of SUBSTR

‘Reference modification’ is used to retrieve or overwrite a sub-string of a string. ‘:’ is known as reference modification operator.

Syntax: String(Starting-Position:Length)

MOVE ‘18’ TO AGE-OUT(1:2) does the same as what we did with STRING command.

When it is used in array elements, the syntax is

 Array-element (occurrence) (Starting-Position:Length)