Converting relative files with variable-length records

You can write a program in RM/COBOL-85 to convert variable-length relative files to fixed-length binary sequential files that ACUCOBOL-GT can use. To do this:

  1. Write a program that reads the desired file using a DEPENDING ON phrase in the RECORD clause of the input file's FD. The variable depend will be filled in with the record size.
  2. Define the output file as follows:
    • Records should be fixed-length binary sequential.
    • Each record must begin with two bytes that are COMP-4, and those two bytes should be filled in with the value of depend.
    • The remainder of the record should be the actual record contents from the input file.
  3. Write the output records to a new file. Use this new fixed-length binary sequential as your ACUCOBOL-GT data file.
Note: ACUCOBOL-GT binary sequential and relative files have essentially the same format.