Picture characters for character data

The only valid characters in a character picture specification are X, A, and 9. Each of these specifies the presence of one character position in the character value.

X

Any character of the 256 possible bit combinations represented by the 8-bit byte.

A

Any alphabetic or extralingual (#, @, $) character, or blank.

9

Any digit, or blank. (Note that the 9 picture specification character allows blanks only for character data.)

When a character value is assigned or transferred to a picture character data item, the particular character in each position is validated according to the corresponding picture specification character. If the character data does not match the specification for that position, the CONVERSION condition is raised for the invalid character. (However, if you change the value by record-oriented transmission or by using an alias, there is no checking.) Consider the following example:

  declare Part# picture 'AAA99X';
  put edit (Part#) (P'AAA99X');

The following values are valid for Part#:

  'ABC12M'
  'bbb09/'
  'XYZb13'

The following values are not valid for Part# (the invalid characters are underscored):

  'AB123M'
  'ABC1/2'
  'Mb#A5;'