A PICTURE string which you have defined for an edited or numeric edited (one which presents numeric data items in a more readable form, for example, with leading zeros removed or with currency signs inserted) data item exceeds the maximum permitted for your COBOL system.
A string comprises 32 slots, each containing 16 characters. If no two consecutive characters in the string are the same, a new slot is allocated to each character. For example:
X(32)B(480)
works, but:
XBXBXBXBXBXBXBXBXBXBXBXBXBXBXBXBX
fails.
Resolution:
Alter the format of the string so that it contains no more than 32 groups of characters, each group holding up to 16 identical, contiguous edit characters.
