HOST-NUMCOMPARE

Controls the operation of comparisons between integer numeric data items of USAGE DISPLAY and alphanumeric literals, figurative constants, or numeric operands.

CAUTION:

This directive can adversely affect the performance of generated code.

Syntax:

>>--.---.--.----.--HOST-NUMCOMPARE------><
    +-/-+  +-NO-+

Parameters:

None

Properties:

Default:	NOHOST-NUMCOMPARE
Phase:	Syntax check
$SET:	Any

Comments:

This directive is provided to improve compatibility with IBM mainframe compilers, resulting in a run-time error 163 ("Illegal character in numeric field") in cases where a S0C7 would have occurred on the mainframe.

Setting HOST-NUMCOMPARE improves compatibility with IBM mainframe compilers for a subset of IF statements when comparing numeric data items with numeric data items or numeric literals.

It is not possible to guarantee 100% compatibility with the IBM mainframe behavior, but setting HOST-NUMCOMPARE does provide emulation for the most common cases.

HOST-NUMCOMPARE is only supported for SIGN settings of ASCII, MF, EBCDIC, and IBM.

For managed COBOL, SIGN"EBCDIC", along with one of HOST-NUMMOVE, HOST-NUMCOMPARE or SIGN-FIXUP is an invalid combination of directives, and is rejected during compilation. For native COBOL, the combination is permitted.

Use HOST-NUMCOMPARE with CHARSET(EBCDIC) for maximum compatibility with IBM mainframe behavior. If CHARSET(ASCII) is used, then some compatibility may be lost due to character encoding differences.