• Characters from the sending fields are transferred to the receiving field, according to the rules for alphanumeric to alphanumeric elementary moves, except that no space filling is provided (see "MOVE Statement" in topic 6.2.24).

• When DELIMITED BY identifier/literal is specified, the contents of each sending item are transferred, character-by-character, beginning with the leftmost character and continuing until either:
  • A delimiter for this sending field is reached (the delimiter itself is not transferred), or

  • The rightmost character of this sending field has been transferred.

• When DELIMITED BY SIZE identifier is specified, each entire sending field is transferred to the receiving field.

• When the receiving field is filled, or when all the sending fields have been processed, the operation is ended.

• When the POINTER phrase is specified, an explicit pointer field is available to the COBOL user to control placement of data in the receiving field. The user must set the explicit pointer's initial value, which must not be less than 1 and not more than the character count of the receiving field. (Note that the pointer field must be defined as a field large enough to contain a value equal to the length of the receiving field plus 1; this precludes arithmetic overflow when the system updates the pointer at the end of the transfer.)

• When the POINTER phrase is not specified, no pointer is available to the user. However, a conceptual implicit pointer with an initial value of 1 is used by the system.

• Conceptually, when the STRING statement is executed, the initial pointer value (explicit or implicit) is the first character position within the receiving field into which data is to be transferred. Beginning at that position, data is then positioned, character-by-character, from left to right. After each character is positioned, the explicit or implicit pointer is increased by 1. The value in the pointer field is changed only in this manner. At the end of processing, the pointer value always indicates a value equal to one character beyond the last character transferred into the receiving field.

     STRING ID-1 ID-2 DELIMITED BY ID-3
            ID-4 ID-5 DELIMITED BY SIZE
       INTO ID-7 WITH POINTER ID-8
     END-STRING

   ID_1 at execution    ID_2 at execution    ID_4 at execution   ID_5 at execution
    __ __ __ __ __ __    __ __ __ __          __ __ __ __ __ __   __ __ __ __ __ 
   | 1| 2| 3| *| 4| 5|  | A| *| B| C|        | 6| 7| 8| 9| *| 0| | D| E| *| F| G|
   |__|__|__|__|__|__|  |__|__|__|__|        |__|__|__|__|__|__| |__|__|__|__|__|
   |___ ____|           |_ |                 |________ ________| |_______ ______|
   First group of       Second group of      Third group of      Fourth group of
   characters moved     characters moved     characters moved    characters moved
       |                  |                                              |
       |_____________     |           ________________|                  |
                     |     |         |                 __________________|
   ID_3              |     |         |                |
   (delimiter)                                     
   at execution  ________ __ _________________ ______________ 
    __           __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ 
   | *|         | 1| 2| 3| A| 6| 7| 8| 9| *| 0| D| E| *| F| G| Z| Z| Z| Z| Z| Z|
   |__|         |__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|
                ID_7 after execution (initialized to ALL Z before execution)

   ID_8
   (pointer)
   after execution
    __ __ 
   | 1| 6|
   |__|__|
   (initialized to 01 before execution)



   Figure 18. STRING Statement Execution Results

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