Splitting data items (UNSTRING)

In the UNSTRING statement you can specify:

• Delimiters that, when one of them is encountered in the sending field, cause the current receiving field to stop receiving and the next, if any, to begin receiving (DELIMITED BY phrase)
• A field for the delimiter that, when encountered in the sending field, causes the current receiving field to stop receiving (DELIMITER IN phrase)
• An integer data item that stores the number of characters placed in the current receiving field (COUNT IN phrase)
• An integer data item that indicates the leftmost character position within the sending field at which UNSTRING processing should begin (WITH POINTER phrase)
• An integer data item that stores a tally of the number of receiving fields that are acted on (TALLYING IN phrase)
• Action to be taken if all of the receiving fields are filled before the end of the sending data item is reached (ON OVERFLOW phrase)

The sending data item and the delimiters in the DELIMITED BY phrase must be of category alphabetic, alphanumeric, alphanumeric-edited, DBCS, national, or national-edited.

Receiving data items can be of category alphabetic, alphanumeric, numeric, DBCS, or national. If numeric, a receiving data item must be zoned decimal or national decimal. If a receiving data item has:

• USAGE DISPLAY, the sending item and each delimiter item in the statement must have USAGE DISPLAY, and each literal in the statement must be alphanumeric
• USAGE NATIONAL, the sending item and each delimiter item in the statement must have USAGE NATIONAL, and each literal in the statement must be national
• USAGE DISPLAY-1, the sending item and each delimiter item in the statement must have USAGE DISPLAY-1, and each literal in the statement must be DBCS

Example: UNSTRING statement