Micro Focus Server Express™

File Handling

MERANT™

Issue 1a
January 2000

MERANT has made every effort to ensure that this manual is correct and accurate but reserves the right to make changes without notice at its sole discretion at any time.

The software described in this document is supplied under a license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license, and in particular any warranty of fitness of MERANT software products for any particular purpose is expressly excluded and in no event will MERANT be liable for any consequential losses.

Micro Focus® is a registered trademark, and MERANT™, Object COBOL™ and Server Express™ are trademarks of MERANT International Limited.

Microsoft® and Windows® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

UNIX® is a registered trademark of X/Open Company Limited.

Copyright© 2000 MERANT
All Rights Reserved

Preface

This book describes the file handling features available with Server Express.

Audience

If you are using Server Express to create COBOL applications which access files, this book is for you.

How to Use this Book

This book contains both guide and reference material. Part 1 describes basic file handling, providing details on file types, naming and organisations, and the file handler, as well as information on how to sort and rebuild files.

Part 2 gives more detailed information on:

• Library routines you can use for handling files
  
  
• Compiler directives, environment variables and so on, that are relevant to file handling
  
  
• Handling C-ISAM and byte-stream files
  
  
• The Callable Sort Module

Part 3 provides reference information on file structures, file status code tables and system limits.

If you are unfamiliar with COBOL files, you should read the first few chapters of this book sequentially. Other chapters can be used as reference, and read when necessary.

MERANT

MERANT was formed by combining Micro Focus and INTERSOLV. All reference to the companies Micro Focus or INTERSOLV in this book should now be taken to mean MERANT. Micro Focus is retained as the family name for the Micro Focus product set produced by MERANT.

Notation

The following type styles and conventions have been used in this book:

• Text that you type is shown like this:

  cat script_name | more

  The italic text denotes a variable that you type as part of the command.

• Text in command lines or code examples that is optional is shown in square brackets. In the following example, the expression can specify that the column_name is like the pattern_value, or is not like the pattern_value, depending on the absence or presence of the optional word NOT:

  column_name [NOT] LIKE pattern_value