Importing a COBOL language structure

The CICS® event binding editor imports COBOL data structures using these rules.

COBOL field names are displayed according to the following rules:
  1. Duplicate names are made unique by the addition of one or more numeric digits.

    For example, two instances of year become year and year1.

  2. Hyphens are replaced by underscore characters. Strings of contiguous hyphens are replaced by contiguous underscores.

    For example, current-user--id becomes current_user__id.

  3. Segments of names that are delimited by hyphens and that contain only uppercase characters are converted to lowercase.

    For example, CA-REQUEST-ID becomes ca_request_id.

  4. A leading underscore character is added to names that start with a numeric character.

    For example, 9A-REQUEST-ID becomes _9a_request_id.

The following restrictions also apply:

  • Data description items with level numbers of 66 and 77 are not supported. Data description items with a level number of 88 are ignored.
  • The following clauses on data description entries are not supported:
    • OCCURS DEPENDING ON
    • OCCURS INDEXED BY
    • REDEFINES
    • RENAMES; that is level 66
    • DATE FORMAT
  • The following clauses on data description items are ignored:
    • BLANK WHEN ZERO
    • JUSTIFIED
    • VALUE
  • The following phrases on the USAGE clause are not supported:
    • OBJECT REFERENCE
    • POINTER
    • FUNCTION-POINTER
    • PROCEDURE-POINTER
  • The only PICTURE characters supported for DISPLAY and COMPUTATIONAL-5 data description items are 9, S, and Z.
  • The PICTURE characters supported for PACKED-DECIMAL data description items are 9, S, V, and Z.
  • The only PICTURE characters supported for edited numeric data description items are 9 and Z.
Parent topic: Selecting variables from imported source code