Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 1 for Eclipse (UNIX) > Programming > Data Access > File Handling > File Handling Guide > Filenames > Assigning Device Names

Assigning Device Names

You can write a COBOL program to send a report directly to the printer or to transfer data across a communications port. To do this, you need to assign a device-name to your COBOL filename.

You can specify the following device-names using static, dynamic or external filename assignment:

Device-name	Description
CON	Console keyboard or screen
PRN	First parallel printer
LPT1	First parallel printer
LPT2	Second parallel printer
LPT3	Third parallel printer
COM1	First asynchronous communications port
COM2	Second asynchronous communications port

When specifying any of these device-names, a trailing colon(:) is optional.

In the following example, read or write operations on fd-name cause data to be read from or written to the console screen:

select fd-name
   assign to "con".

In the next example, write operations on fd-name cause data to be output to lpt1:, the first parallel printer:

select fd-name
   assign to dynamic ws-filename.
   ...
   move "lpt1:" to ws-filename.