COBOL statements and national data

You can use national data with the PROCEDURE DIVISION and compiler-directing statements shown in the table below.

Table 1. COBOL statements and national data
COBOL statement Can be national Comment For more information
ACCEPT identifier-1, identifier-2 identifier-1 is converted from the native code page specified in the CODEPAGE compiler option only if input is from CONSOLE. Assigning input from a screen or file (ACCEPT)
ADD All identifiers can be numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL. identifier-3 (GIVING) can be numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL.   Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements
CALL identifier-2, identifier-3, identifier-4, identifier-5; literal-2, literal-3   Passing data
COMPUTE identifier-1 can be numeric or numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL. arithmetic-expression can contain numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL.   Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements
COPY . . . REPLACING operand-1, operand-2 of the REPLACING phrase   Compiler-directing statements
DISPLAY identifier-1 identifier-1 is converted to EBCDIC only if the CONSOLE mnemonic-name is specified directly or indirectly. Displaying values on a screen or in a file (DISPLAY)
DIVIDE All identifiers can be numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL. identifier-3 (GIVING) and identifier-4 (REMAINDER) can be numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL.   Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements
INITIALIZE identifier-1; identifier-2 or literal-1 of the REPLACING phrase If you specify REPLACING NATIONAL or REPLACING NATIONAL-EDITED, identifier-2 or literal-1 must be valid as a sending operand in a move to identifier-1. Examples: initializing data items
INSPECT All identifiers and literals. (identifier-2, the TALLYING integer data item, can have USAGE NATIONAL.) If any of these (other than identifier-2, the TALLYING identifier) have USAGE NATIONAL, all must be national. Tallying and replacing data items (INSPECT)
INVOKE Method-name as identifier-2 or literal-1; identifier-3 or literal-2 in the BY VALUE phrase   Invoking methods (INVOKE)
JSON PARSE identifier-2 (the target data item); identifier-3 (the NAME identifier); literal-1 (the NAME substitution); identifier-4 (the SUPPRESS identifier) identifier-1 is not supported as a national data item. Processing JSON input
MERGE Merge keys The COLLATING SEQUENCE phrase does not apply. Setting sort or merge criteria
MOVE Both the sender and receiver, or only the receiver Implicit conversions are performed for valid MOVE operands. Assigning values to elementary data items (MOVE)

Assigning values to group data items (MOVE)

MULTIPLY All identifiers can be numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL. identifier-3 (GIVING) can be numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL.   Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements
SEARCH ALL (binary search) Both the key data item and its object of comparison The key data item and its object of comparison must be compatible according to the rules of comparison. If the object of comparison is of class national, the key must be also. Doing a binary search (SEARCH ALL)
SORT Sort keys The COLLATING SEQUENCE phrase does not apply. Setting sort or merge criteria
STRING All identifiers and literals. (identifier-4, the POINTER integer data item, can have USAGE NATIONAL.) If identifier-3, the receiving data item, is national, all identifiers and literals (other than identifier-4, the POINTER identifier) must be national. Joining data items (STRING)
SUBTRACT All identifiers can be numeric items that have USAGE NATIONAL. identifier-3 (GIVING) can be numeric-edited with USAGE NATIONAL.   Using COMPUTE and other arithmetic statements
UNSTRING All identifiers and literals. (identifier-6 and identifier-7, the COUNT and TALLYING integer data items, respectively, can have USAGE NATIONAL.) If identifier-4, a receiving data item, has USAGE NATIONAL, the sending data item and each delimiter must have USAGE NATIONAL, and each literal must be national. Splitting data items (UNSTRING)
XML GENERATE identifier-1 (the generated XML document); identifier-2 (the source field or fields); identifier-4 or literal-4 (the namespace identifier); identifier-5 or literal-5 (the namespace prefix)   Producing XML output
XML PARSE identifier-1 (the XML document) The XML-NTEXT special register contains national character document fragments during parsing. XML-NNAMESPACE and XML-NNAMESPACE-PREFIX special registers contain the associated namespace identifier and namespace prefix, if any, in national characters. Processing XML input

Related tasks  
Defining numeric data  
Displaying numeric data  
Using national data (Unicode) in COBOL  
Comparing national (UTF-16) data

Related references   
CODEPAGE  
Classes and categories of data (Enterprise COBOL for z/OS® Language Reference)