IBM Mainframe Forum

Hi all,

My question is how to use the field “length of” included in a record to extract the ensuing “length of” bytes.

We have an input file (FB) with the following “copy”:

01 to 0020 fixed structure
21 to 1000 variable structures as:

- Field Code: packed decimal: 3 bytes
- Data Length: binary: 2 bytes
- Data: depending on Data length bytes

The input fields are not in an specific order, and probably some of them will not appear.

I.e.

Field X’00001C’ means “Name”, max length 20 bytes, not always filled (first record, 4 bytes, second record 10 bytes).
Field X’00002C’ means “Surname”, max length 20 bytes, not always filled (first record, 7 bytes, second record 15 bytes).



We need to create an output file with Fixed part and only “name”, ”surname” fields, and full length.


I tried to use PARSE to find out the fields I’m interested in, but using FIXLEN as a fixed length of 20 bytes, my output creates “rubbish” bytes just extracting 20 bytes from end of “Field code”,



Thank you in advance

Domingo Fernández.

DFSORT does NOT have any built-in functions for handling embedded dynamic lengths.

I'd suggest you write a program or exit with the needed logic to do what you want.

Thank you very much Frank.

I've discover lot of utilities with DFSORT in order to replace a basic COBOL program reviewing this forum, they will be very helpful in the future.