STRING and UNSTRING

STRING

STRING joins fields into one target, moving characters until the target is full. DELIMITED BY SIZE copies a whole field, and DELIMITED BY SPACE stops at the first space:

STRING WS-FIRST-NAME DELIMITED BY SPACE " " DELIMITED BY SIZE WS-LAST-NAME DELIMITED BY SIZE INTO WS-FULL-NAME.

UNSTRING

UNSTRING splits a source field into targets, breaking at a delimiter. DELIMITED BY "," reads CSV-style input, and the delimiter itself is discarded:

UNSTRING WS-LINE DELIMITED BY "," INTO WS-NAME WS-CITY WS-ZIP.

WITH POINTER

WITH POINTER tracks the character position, so UNSTRING can continue where the last one stopped. TALLYING counts how many fields were filled, which catches short input lines:

UNSTRING WS-LINE DELIMITED BY "," INTO WS-A WS-B WS-C TALLYING WS-FILLED.

Next: Files: SELECT and FD

Article author: Arthur Isaev