Cursor position input and FILL=NULL

With MFS, a problem might arise when the application program is told the cursor position on input.

This problem occurs when:

The input message uses formatting option 1 or 2.
The MFLD used for cursor position data is defined in a segment where at least one MFLD is defined to use null fill (FILL=NULL).

When these conditions occur, cursor position 63 (X'3F') results in a 3-byte field containing compressed cursor data, rather than a normal 4-byte field. The MFLD with this potential problem is flagged with the message DFS1150.

To avoid this problem, change the MFLD statement for the cursor data field to specify EXIT=(0,2). This will cause the IMS TM-provided field edit routine to convert the field contents from binary to EBCDIC. The application program must also be changed to handle the EBCDIC format.