Reporting Facility Rules for Coding › Reporting Facility Programs

Reporting Facility Programs

A Reporting Facility statement consists of an English-like command and its associated qualifying parameters. Each statement specifies a particular function or operation to be performed. Enter the statements free-form in card-image format. You may separate each entry with any number of spaces.

If you code totally blank lines, the Reporting Facility ignores them. You can overflow the program statements onto any number of consecutive input lines, but the following rules must apply:

• Only columns 1—72 of any input line can contain source information. The system uses columns 73—80 for sequence numbers.
• Command words, field names, numeric constants, and literals enclosed in apostrophes must be specified in one statement and cannot span from one card-image to another.

To improve program readability, use multiple input statements when coding individual commands and their associated parameters.

For example, the command

 DECODE DD INTO ALPHA-DAY 1='MON' 2='TUE' 3='WED' 4='THU'
                          5='FRI' 6='SAT' ELSE 'SUN'

could be coded as follows to improve readability and appearance of the program:

 DECODE DD INTO ALPHA-DAY 1='MON'
                          2='TUE'
                          3='WED'
                          4='THU'
                          5='FRI'
                          6='SAT'
                          ELSE 'SUN'

The Reporting Facility is parameter driven and commands are interpreted sequentially. Therefore, the sequence in which you present the commands to the Reporting Facility is very important.