Re: [open-cobol-list] possibly bug: accept into numeric field

[Keisuke Nishida]

At Tue, 4 Nov 2003 13:54:39 +0100,
Thomas Biehler wrote:
> 
> i am not sure, but there is possibly a bug in open-cobol 
> in the accept statement.
> 
> The problematic case is an accept into a numeric field 
> when inputing less characters as in PICTURE-SIZE given.
> The actual behaviour is the alignment to left (ok!) and
> the filling up to the SIZE of the field with SPACES! ( IMO not ok)
> 
> I read in both ANSI-Standards (1985 / 2002) about the ACCEPT-Statement.
> As far as i unterstand it, only the left alignment is ok.  
> These standards are saying nothing about "alphanumeric fillup". 
> (The MICRO-FOCUS Compiler does not makes the "alphanumeric fillup"
> but IMHO the ANSI-Cobol Standards are not very precise in the Specfication
> of the ACCEPT - "Format 1"; perhaps it is question of interpretation ?! )

I checked the COBOL 2002 standard right now.  It says

| 14.8.1.3 4) a) If the size of the receiving data item [...] exceeds
| the size of the transferred data, the transferred data is stored
| aligned to the left in the receiving data item [...], and additional
| data is requested.

so the correct behavior might be to read additional characters from
the terminal.  Is this what you expect?  What other compilers do about
this?

Keisuke