NOCMPR2

The PROGRAM COLLATING SEQUENCE established in the OBJECT COMPUTER paragraph is used to determine the truth value of any nonnumeric comparisons that are:
  • Explicitly specified in relation conditions
  • Explicitly specified in condition-name conditions
  • Implicitly performed as part of the execution of the SORT and MERGE statements, unless overridden by the COLLATING SEQUENCE phrase on the respective SORT or MERGE statement

The native collating sequence is used to determine the truth value of any nonnumeric comparisons that are implicitly performed as part of the execution of STRING, UNSTRING, and INSPECT statements.

For most applications, this difference will not affect the results of these statements. The implicit comparisons performed as part of STRING, UNSTRING, and INSPECT statements are always for equality. Therefore, even if the ordering of the characters in the PROGRAM COLLATING SEQUENCE is different than that of the native sequence, the results of these comparisons will be the same.

For an application to be affected by this change, the PROGRAM COLLATING SEQUENCE established in the OBJECT COMPUTER paragraph must identify an alphabet that was defined with the ALSO clause, which assigns several different characters to the same ordinal position.