March 2014
Intermediate to advanced
588 pages
15h 43m
English
Content preview from Beginning COBOL for Programmers
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CHAPTER 11
Creating Tabular Data
This chapter and the next return to the DATA DIVISION to explore more data-declaration concepts. In this chapter, I discuss how to create and manipulate tabular data. I compare and contrast COBOL tables with the arrays used in many other programming languages. Chapter 12 covers more advanced data declaration using the USAGE, REDEFINES, and RENAMES clauses.
The chapter starts with a discussion of the similarities and differences between arrays and tables. You then see how COBOL tables are declared using the OCCURS clause and manipulated using subscripts. I introduce a scenario to explain why tabular data is required ...