Steve, I'm not sure what was difficult about the question. The intent behind it is "if when next I see reference to a non-COBOL PIC, if it happens to be 11, I know whether it means 11 or 17". Is it somehow a question which can only be asked when the answer is needed? "Hey, it's 0-9, who gives a rats' toenail what base it is in".
I would think that the presumption that the question was about the magnitude of "1" would lie solely in the domain of some esoteric branch of higher mathematics. No, add some subset of sysprogs to that as well. I had one, fortunately only one, all others I've encountered have been extremely helpful, who would only answer "yes", "no" or smile to a question (that's how he treated contractors). Meant you needed to know the answer to your own question before asking. After trying this once, my only further involvement was to "bait" him a couple of times, until he caught on. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
