INITIALIZE statement

Consider the following example:

01  ALPHA  PIC AABAABAA.

INITIALIZE ALPHA REPLACING ALPHABETIC DATA BY ALL "3".

A statement like this coded under CMPR2 is valid and initialization will take place. However, this statement gives the following warning message under NOCMPR2, and no initialization will take effect:

IGYPS2047-W

"INITIALIZE" statement receiver "ALPHA" was incompatible with the data category(s) of the "REPLACING" operand(s). "ALPHA" was not initialized.

This incompatibility can also happen when a group of items are being initialized. Under NOCMPR2, ALPHA mentioned earlier would be classified as alphanumeric-edited. If ALPHA was defined in a group that was to be initialized, a message like the one mentioned earlier would be issued only if there were no alphabetic items to be initialized. Thus, in the following example, ALPHA is never initialized, but no message alerts you to that fact.

01  GROUP1.
    05 ALPHA  PIC AABAA.
    05 BETA   PIC AAA.

INITIALIZE GROUP1 REPLACING ALPHABETIC DATA BY ALL "5".