Examples of alignment

Consider, for example, a structure consisting of a single character and a fullword fixed binary item. The fullword fixed binary item has a fullword alignment requirement; the character has a byte alignment requirement. In PL/I, ALIGNED is the default, and the structure is declared as follows:

DCL 1 A,
    2 B CHAR(1),
    2 C FIXED BINARY(31,0);

and is held like this:

In COBOL, using SYNCHRONIZED, the structure would be declared as follows:

01 A SYNCHRONIZED.
   02 B PIC X DISPLAY.
   02 C PIC S9(9) BINARY.

and is held like this:

In COBOL, without SYNCHRONIZED, the structure would be declared as follows:

01 A.
   02 B PIC X.
   02 C PIC S9(9) USAGE BINARY.

and is held like this: