gnubol: ALPHANUMERIC-EDITED MOVE - initial results

["William M. Klein" <wmklein@ix.netcom.com>]

The good news is that so far ALL "reporting" compilers all do the exact same
thing. (Sorry for the missing paragraph name in my sample program.) I have
received quite a number of replies concerning both workstation and
"proprietary" mainframe compilers, '74 and '85 as well.

EVERYONE seems to treat a PIC X/X sending item *exactly* as if it were
defined as PIC XXX.  (This includes moving to another PIC X/X item - or when
truncation occurs)

This seems (to me) that I can "safely" write a proposal that says that
editing characters for alphanumeric-edited and national-edited items (but not
numeric-edited items) are "ignored" in sending items and treated "as if" the
corresponding X or N character were specified.

Obviously, if some compiler turns up that does something else (or if anyone
finds something in the '85 Standard that would seem to require some other
behavior), we will need to modify the proposal.  I will include this as an
"open issue" but also include the results of my research (up to now).

Bill Klein
  wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com


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