At least VS COBOL II, as far as I can remember. This is when CICS added the
COBOL2 translate option to allow the LENGTH argument to be omitted, since it
used LENGTH OF under the covers.
Also, it's called a "special register" rather than built-in function; though
now there is also an intrinsic function LENGTH, as well as BYTE-LENGTH.
One thing that LENGTH OF will do that the others won't is allow you to get the
length of a table element without subscripting it, e.g.
01 my-table.
05 my-entry occurs 10 times.
10 me-one pic x(8).
10 me-two pic s9(9) comp.
call 'something' using my-table, content length of my-entry
The LENGTH OF special register and the BYTE-LENGTH function both return the
number of bytes of a field. The LENGTH function will return the number of
"characters" for both USAGE DISPLAY and USAGE NATIONAL, meaning LENGTH
OF/BYTE-LENGTH function for a PIC N(10) returns 20, while LENGTH function
returns 10.
For the new UTF-8 it seems to do its own thing that I have not researched yet.
But so far it returns 10 for all 3, even though it allocates 40 bytes for a PIC
U(10). I'm sure there is some logic behind it.
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
Phil Smith III
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2023 5:09 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: LENGTH OF in COBOL (was: ISPF HILITE Question)
Since when does COBOL have LENGTH OF? I looked for this about 12 years ago and
didn't find it, wrote a tiny and trivial assembler function to do the same
thing. Did I miss it, or is it new since then?
Not that the code has needed any support, but I'm glad that if it ever becomes
an issue, I can say "Use the BIF instead"!
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