Indexing

For example, INX-A in the following code is an index-name:

05 TABLE-ITEM PIC X(8)
     OCCURS 10 INDEXED BY INX-A.

The compiler calculates the value contained in the index as the occurrence number (subscript) minus 1, multiplied by the length of the table element. Therefore, for the fifth occurrence of TABLE-ITEM, the binary value contained in INX-A is (5 - 1) * 8, or 32.

You can use an index-name to reference another table only if both table descriptions have the same number of table elements, and the table elements are of the same length.

77  INX-B  USAGE IS INDEX.
. . .
    SET INX-A TO 10
    SET INX-B TO INX-A.
    PERFORM VARYING INX-A FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL INX-A > INX-B
        DISPLAY TABLE-ITEM (INX-A)
        . . .
    END-PERFORM.

The index-name INX-A is used to traverse table TABLE-ITEM above. The index data item INX-B is used to hold the index of the last element of the table. The advantage of this type of coding is that calculation of offsets of table elements is minimized, and no conversion is necessary for the UNTIL condition.

You can use the SET statement to assign to an index data item the value that you stored in an index-name, as in the statement SET INX-B TO INX-A above. For example, when you load records into a variable-length table, you can store the index value of the last record into a data item defined as USAGE IS INDEX. Then you can test for the end of the table by comparing the current index value with the index value of the last record. This technique is useful when you look through or process a table.

SET INX-A DOWN BY 3

The integer represents a number of occurrences. It is converted to an index value before being added to or subtracted from the index.

Initialize the index-name by using a SET, PERFORM VARYING, or SEARCH ALL statement. You can then use the index-name in SEARCH or relational condition statements. To change the value, use a PERFORM, SEARCH, or SET statement.

Because you are comparing a physical displacement, you can directly use index data items only in SEARCH and SET statements or in comparisons with indexes or other index data items. You cannot use index data items as subscripts or indexes.

Example: indexing