Defining national data items
Define national data items with the USAGE
NATIONAL clause
to hold national (UTF-16) character strings.
You can define national data items of the following categories:
- National
- National-edited
- Numeric-edited
To
define a category national data item, code a PICTURE clause
that contains only one or more PICTURE symbols N.
To define a national-edited data item, code a PICTURE clause
that contains at least one of each of the following symbols:
- Symbol
N - Simple
insertion editing symbol
B,0, or/
To define
a numeric-edited data item of class national, code
a PICTURE clause that defines a numeric-edited item
(for example, -$999.99) and code
a USAGE NATIONAL clause. You
can use a numeric-edited data item that has USAGE NATIONAL in
the same way that you use a numeric-edited item that has USAGE
DISPLAY.
You can also define a data item as numeric-edited by coding
the BLANK WHEN ZERO clause for an elementary item
that is defined as numeric by its PICTURE clause.
If
you code a PICTURE clause but do not code a USAGE clause
for data items that contain only one or more PICTURE symbols N,
you can use the compiler option NSYMBOL(NATIONAL) to
ensure that such items are treated as national data items instead
of as DBCS items.