Example of Connecting a File to Standard Output

 select input-file
     assign to "fname"
     organization is line sequential.
  ...
 fd input-file
    record contains 80 characters.
 01 input-file-record pic x(80).
 ...
 procedure division.
     open input input-file.
     read input-file record.
  ...
     close input-file.
     stop run.

If, before running the above program, the following command is issued:

set dd_fname="<cmd /c dir c:\help"

then each READ operation on input-file returns the next line of output from the dir command.