4.2.3.2.1 "COBOL Language Reference" IBM Library Server

4.2.3.2.1 Assignment Name for Non-Environment Variables and Literals

If a literal or non-data-name word is specified for the name, the assignment name is processed as follows:


    ___ ASSIGNment name format _____________________________________________ 
   |                                                                        |
   | >>__ __________ __ _________________ ________________________________> |
   |     |_comment-_|  |_file system ID-_|                                  |
   |                                                                        |
   | >__ _system file name__ _______________ _ __________________________>< |
   |    |                   |_| alt_index |_| |                             |
   |    |_environment variable name___________|                             |
   |                                                                        |
   | alt_index:                                                             |
   |                            <______________________________             |
   | |__(__alt-inx-file-name-1___ ____________________________ |__)_______| |
   |                             |_,__ _____________________ _|             |
   |                                  |_alt-inx-file-name-2_|               |
   |                                                                        |
   |________________________________________________________________________|

Comment

All characters to the left of the system-file ID are treated as comments. Comments can be hyphenated, for example, my-comment or this-is-my-comment.

File-system ID

The first three characters of the file-system ID are used to determine the file-system identifier. If the character string for the file-system ID is less than three characters, then the entire character string (along with any character strings to the left of it) is treated as a comment. If you include comments (hyphenated or not), you must include the separating hyphen between the comment and the file-system ID.

For example, take the following two assignment-name formats:

my-comment-vsam-myfile

In this example, my-comment is the comment, vsam is the file-system ID, and myfile is the system file or environment variable name.

my-comment-am-myfile

In this example, my-comment-am is the comment, and myfile is the system file or environment variable name.

System file name / Environment variable name

If the assignment name is not specified in the literal form and the environment variable matching the character string is found at run time, the environment variable value is used to identify the file system and the system file name. Otherwise, the character string is used as the system file name.

Specifying alternate indexes-- The compiler normally assigns default alternate index file names; however, you must override the default assignment when:

The file is not a local VSAM file and has different alternate index file name specification rules. For example, an SFS file where SFS requires an alternate index file name to start with the base file name followed by ; followed by a character string of your choice.
The file already exists and has alternate index files with names not corresponding to the default alternate index file names that are assigned by the compiler. For example, a remote OS/390 VSAM file or a local VSAM file create through a different language, such as PL/I.

If specifying alternate index names, they must be specified in the same order as the alternate record keys are specified in the source program. You can omit alternate index names, but any other alternate index names must correspond to the position in the file definition. The following example shows how to specify the first and third alternate index names:


               base-file-name(first-index-file-name,,third-index-file-name)

In the above example, the compiler will assign a default file name for the second alternate index file.

Alternate index file names are ignored for file systems that do not require separate alternate index files, such as the STL file system.

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4.2.3.2.1 Assignment Name for Non-Environment Variables and Literals

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