VALUE clause

COBOL can assign variables default values as they are being declared.

In this example, the variable FIRST-STRING is set to be blank characters, FIRST-NUMBER is given the value 5 and SECOND-STRING the value ‘HELLO’. It can be important that these values are preserved because the target program might expect that these values are in place.

01  VALUES-TEST.                                     
 02  FIRST-STRING               PIC X(10) VALUE SPACES.    
 02  FIRST-NUMBER               PIC S9(8) VALUE 5.         
 02  SECOND-STRING              PIC X(10) VALUE 'HELLO'.

IBM® Record Generator for Java™ supplies the method setInitialValues() that sets the default values. This method is automatically called when the default zero arguments constructor is called.

public static void main(String [] args){
	ValuesTest values = new ValuesTest();
		
	int firstNumber = values.getFirstNumber();  //Will be set to the value 5
	String secondString = values.getSecondString();  //Will be set to HELLO
		
}