Conversion of data types when concatenating fields in DDS

If the field you are defining is a concatenation of fields from the associated physical file (specified by the CONCAT keyword), you cannot specify the data type. The operating system assigns the data type based on the data types of the fields that are being concatenated.

The general rules are:
  • If the concatenation contains one or more hexadecimal (H) fields, the resulting data type is hexadecimal (H).
  • If the concatenation contains one or more character (A) fields, but no hexadecimal fields, the resulting data type is character (A).
  • If the concatenation contains only numeric (S, P, B) fields, the resulting data type is zoned decimal (S).
  • If the concatenation contains UTF-8 fields, the result is UTF-8.
  • If the concatenation contains UCS-2 or UTF-16 field, the result is UTF-16 if there is a UTF-16 field in the list; otherwise, the result is UCS-2.
  • If the concatenation contains binary character fields, the result is binary character.
Parent topic: Data type for physical and logical files (position 35)