CTRAN Without Pain

CTRAN Without Pain

By Francis Mariani

Problem:

Started from an old post on Focal Point: trying to use this CTRAN Subroutine to translate a comma into a space, but don't know the deciaml value of a comma:

CTRAN( inlen, infield, decfrm, decto, output )

decfrm is the "decimal value of the character to be traslated"

The question turns to: can you use CTRAN without having to figure out the Hex value (which is different for ASCII and EBCDIC)?

Solution:

Original syntax:

CTRAN(charlen, string, decimal, decvalue, outfield);

BYTVAL(character, outfield);

Adapted syntax:

CTRAN(charlen, string, BYTVAL('from','I3'), BYTVAL('to','I3'), outfield);

e.g.:

-*-- Convert Apostrophe to Right Single Quotation Mark -------------------------
-SET &OBJ_NAME4 = CTRAN(&OBJ_NAME.LENGTH, &OBJ_NAME, BYTVAL('''','I3'), BYTVAL('’','I3'), 
'A&OBJ_NAME.LENGTH');
-*-- Convert Slash and Dash to blank -------------------------------------------
RGN1/A50 = CTRAN(50, RGN0, BYTVAL('/','I2'), BYTVAL(' ','I2'), 'A50');
RGN2/A50 = CTRAN(50, RGN1, BYTVAL('-','I2'), BYTVAL(' ','I2'), 'A50');

You will never have to look for an ASCII or EBCDIC chart again! This tip is also posted on Focal Point.

If any questions, please contact Francis at fm@francismariani.com.