Displayable numbers coded in a floating-point format are called external floating-point items. Like external decimal items, you define external floating-point items explicitly with USAGE DISPLAY or implicitly by omitting the USAGE clause.
In the following example, COMPUTE-RESULT is implicitly defined as an external floating-point item. Each byte of storage contains one character (except for V).
05 COMPUTE-RESULT PIC -9V(9)E-99.
The VALUE clause is not allowed in the data description for external floating-point items. Also, the minus signs (-) do not mean that the mantissa and exponent will always be negative numbers, but that when displayed the sign will appear as a blank for positive and a minus for negative. If a plus sign (+) were used, positive would be displayed as a plus sign and negative as a minus sign.
Just as with external decimal numbers, external floating-point numbers have to be converted (automatically by the compiler) to an internal representation of the numeric value before they can be operated on. External floating-point numbers are always converted to internal long floating-point format.
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