External Format

If you have numeric, character, or date-time fields in program-described files, you can specify their external format.

The external format does not affect the way in which a field is processed. However, you may be able to improve performance of arithmetic operations, depending on the internal format specified. For more information, see Performance Considerations.

The following table shows how to specify the external format of program-described fields. For more information on each format type, see the appropriate section in the remainder of this chapter.