Reporting Facility Rules for Coding › User-Defined Field Names

User-Defined Field Names

To access data at a specific location within an input record or the General Storage Area (GSA), assign a symbolic name to that location. When referencing storage reserved as part of an input record field, each field name must be defined with the DEFINE command. You do not need to account for filler entries.

Define fields in the GSA in one of the following ways:

• Explicitly, with the DEFINE command
• Implicitly, by the procedural command itself (COMPUTE, SET, or DECODE)

The field name assigned to any specific location must follow these basic rules:

• Field names must begin with a character in the range of A—Z and all other characters must be in the range of A—Z, 0—9, or be a - (dash) or an _ (underscore). The Reporting Facility allows no other special characters in a field name specification.
• The last character of a field name must not be a (-) dash or an _ (underscore).
• The field name cannot exceed 72 characters and is terminated by a blank.

Valid Field Names

• TRANSACTION-CODE
• YEAR-TO-DATE-TAXES-1990
• YTDCOMM
• THIS-IS-ALSO-A-VALID-FIELDNAME-IN-A-PROGRAM

Invalid Field Names

The following entries result in the described error conditions:

123

First character is not A—Z.

FIELD#1

Special character is present.

INPUT

Field name is a Reporting Facility reserved word.

TYPE-CODE-

Last character is a dash.

PAY_DAY_

Last character is an underscore.