Re: ASA when using cobol

On 26 Sep 2004 14:48:51 -0700, partoche@caramail.com (diesmo) wrote:

>Hello!
>
>I found this sentence in a cobol program:
>   SELECT file1 ASSIGN TO file2 ASA.
>
>ASA means, i think, that the file uses the ASA records delimiter.
>
>Is this keyword and syntax construction part of
>   - 1) the cobol standard syntax,
>   - 2) or part of a specific dialect (only MFocus for example ?),
>   - 3) or is it not cobol (Pro*COBOL ? ), and the file has to be
>preprocessed : the compiler should just remember that the file uses
>ASA ?

Whoops. I thought you were sameer, who is wrestling with a similar
flat file problem. Now I see you're the 'Java parsing guy'. I
apologize for the misunderstanding.

ASA means records are delimited (prelimited?) by a leading space. It's
not standard Cobol nor supported by Micro Focus.

>Are there any other "ASA"-like constructions ?
>If someone knows a link with documentation on these aspects of using
>Files in Cobol...

I doubt there are. More likely exceptions are in ORGANIZATION IS.