External Filename Assignment

With external filename assignment, the filename is specified in the SELECT clause as follows:

 select filename
     assign to external external-file-reference

where the parameters are:

filename
The filename of the file that is to be assigned.
external-file-reference
A COBOL word that identifies the specified file to the external environment for possible further mapping. If external-file-reference contains one or more hyphens, all characters up to and including the last hyphen are ignored.

See Filename Mapping for more information.