ANS85 

Arguments

Arguments specify values used in the evaluation of a function. Arguments are specified in the function-identifier. These arguments can be specified as identifiers, as arithmetic expressions, or as literals. The definition of a function specifies the number of arguments required, which can be zero, one, or more. For some functions, the number of arguments which can be specified is variable. The order in which arguments are specified in a function-identifier determines the interpretation given to each value in arriving at the function value. Arguments may be required to have a certain class or a subset of a certain class. The types of argument are:

  1. Numeric. An arithmetic expression must be specified. The value of the arithmetic expression, including operational sign, is used in determining the value of the function.
  2. Alphabetic. An elementary data item of the class alphabetic or a nonnumeric literal containing only alphabetic characters must be specified. The size associated with the argument can be used in determining the value of the function.
  3. Alphanumeric. A data item of the class alphabetic or alphanumeric or a nonnumeric literal must be specified. The size associated with the argument can be used in determining the value of the function.
  4. MF National. An elementary data item of class national or a national literal must be specified. The size associated with the argument can be used in determining the value of the function.
  5. Integer. An arithmetic expression which will always result in an integer value must be specified. The value of the arithmetic expression, including operational sign, is used in determining the value of the function.

The rules for a function can place constraints on the permissible values for arguments, in order to accurately determine the function's value. If, at the time a function is referenced, the arguments specified for that reference do not have values within the permissible range, the returned value for the function is undefined.

When the definition of a function permits an argument to be repeated a variable number of times, a table can be referenced by specifying the data-name and any qualifiers that identify the table, followed immediately by subscripting where one or more of the subscripts is the word ALL.

When ALL is specified as a subscript, the effect is as if each table element associated with that subscript position were specified. The order of the implicit specification of each occurrence is from left to right, with the first (or leftmost) specification being the identifier with each subscript specified by the word ALL replaced by one, the next specification being the same identifier with the rightmost subscript specified by the word ALL incremented by one.

This process continues with the rightmost ALL subscript being incremented by one for each implicit specification until the rightmost ALL subscript has been incremented through its range of values. If any additional ALL subscripts exist, the subscript immediately to the left of the rightmost ALL subscript is incremented by one, the rightmost ALL subscript is reset to one and the process of varying the rightmost ALL subscript is repeated. The ALL subscript to the left of the rightmost ALL subscript is incremented through its range of values. For each additional ALL subscript this process is repeated in turn until the leftmost ALL subscript has been incremented by one through its range of values.

If the ALL subscript is associated with an OCCURS DEPENDING ON clause, the range of values is determined by the object of the OCCURS DEPENDING ON clause. The evaluation of an ALL subscript must result in at least one argument, otherwise the result of the reference to the function-identifier is undefined.

Example

 01 Test-Fields.
     10 OT-Elem                  PIC 9(02).
     10 Arr.
         15 Ind occurs 5 times        PIC 9(02).
     compute OT-Elem = function sum (IND(ALL)).

is equivalent to specifying

     compute OT-Elem = function sum (IND(1), IND(2), IND(3),
                                            IND(4), IND(5)).

The ALL subscript can also be used with a table that has a variable number of elements as in the following example:

 01 Test-Group.
     03 OT-Elem               pic 9(15) binary.
     03 table-length          pic s9(9) binary.
     03 array.
         05 Ind pic 9(2) occurs 1 to 200 times depending on
                              table length
      ...
     move 100 to table-length.
     compute OT-Elem = function sum (Ind(ALL))

These statements will sum the first 100 elements of the table. At the time the function is referenced, the number of elements specified by table-length determines that number of elements that are added.