SET command (COBOL)

The SET command assigns a value to a COBOL reference. The SET keyword cannot be abbreviated.


>>-SET--reference--TO--+-reference-+--;------------------------><
                       +-literal---+      
                       '-TRUE------'

reference: A valid Debug Tool COBOL reference.
literal: A valid COBOL numeric literal constant.
TRUE: The value assigned to a COBOL level-88 reference.
In order to assign the value TRUE, the PTF for Language Environment® APAR PK30521 must be installed on z/OS® Version 1 Release 6, Version 1 Release 7, and Version 1 Release 8.

Usage notes

For Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Version 5, you cannot use the SET command to set an index with a non-integer data item (e.g. PIC 9v9).
For Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Version 5, you can set a pointer to the address of an array. The pointer is set to the start of the array.
You can assign the value TRUE only to a COBOL level-88 reference.
If Debug Tool was started because of a computational condition or an attention interrupt, using an assignment to set a variable might not give expected results. This is due to the uncertainty of variable values within statements as opposed to their values at statement boundaries.
SET assigns a value only to a single receiver; unlike COBOL, multiple receiver variables are not supported.
Only formats 1, 4 and 5 of the COBOL SET command are supported.
Index-names can only be program variables (because OCCURS is not supported for the Debug Tool session variables).
COBOL ADDRESS OF identifier is supported only for identifiers that are LINKAGE SECTION variables. In addition, COBOL ADDRESS OF as a receiver must be level 1 or 77, and COBOL ADDRESS OF as a sender can be any level except 66 or 88.
Debug Tool provides a hexadecimal constant that can be used with the SET command, where the hexadecimal value is preceded by an "H" and delimited by quotation marks (") or apostrophes (').
If the DATA option of the PLAYBACK ENABLE command is in effect, you can use the SET command to assign a value only to a session variable. You cannot assign a value to a program variable.
If you are debugging an optimized COBOL program, you can use the SET command to assign a value to a program variable only if you first enter the SET WARNING OFF command. The source or target of the SET command cannot reference a variable that was discarded by the optimizer.

Examples

Assign the value 3 to inx1, the index to itm-1.
```
SET inx1 TO 3;
```
Assign the value of inx1 to inx2.
```
SET inx2 TO inx1;
```
Assign the value of an invalid address (nonnumeric 0) to ptr and:
```
SET ptr TO NULL;
```
Assign the address of one to ptr.
```
SET ptr TO ADDRESS OF one;
```
Assigns the hexadecimal value of '20000' to the pointer ptr.
```
SET ptr TO H'200000';
```

Refer to the following topics for more information related to the material discussed in this topic.

Related tasks
Debug Tool User's Guide
Related references
Allowable moves for the Debug Tool SET command