7.1.1.5 "COBOL Language Reference" IBM Library Server

7.1.1.5 ALL Subscripting

When a function allows an argument to be repeated a variable number of times, you can refer to a table by specifying the data-name and any qualifiers that identify the table. This can be followed immediately by subscripting where one or more of the subscripts is the word ALL.

Note: The evaluation of an ALL subscript must result in at least one argument or the value returned by the function will be undefined; however, the situation can be diagnosed at run-time by specifying the SSRANGE compiler option and the CHECK run-time option.

Specifying ALL as a subscript is equivalent to specifying all table elements possible using every valid subscript in that subscript position.

For a table argument specified as "Table-name(ALL)", the order of the implicit specification of each table element as an argument is from left to right, where the first (or leftmost) argument is "Table-name(1)" and ALL has been replaced by 1. The next argument is "Table-name(2)", where the subscript has been incremented by 1. This process continues, with the subscript being incremented by 1 to produce an implicit argument, until the ALL subscript has been incremented through its range of values.

For example,


     FUNCTION MAX(Table(ALL))

is equivalent to


     FUNCTION MAX(Table(1) Table(2) Table(3)... Table(n))

where n is the number of elements in Table.

If there are multiple ALL subscripts, "Table-name(ALL, ALL, ALL)", the first implicit argument is "Table-name(1, 1, 1)", where each ALL has been replaced by 1. The next argument is "Table-name(1, 1, 2)", where the rightmost subscript has been incremented by 1. The subscript represented by the rightmost ALL is incremented through its range of values to produce an implicit argument for each value.

Once a subscript specified as ALL has been incremented through its range of values, the next subscript to the left that is specified as ALL is incremented by 1. Each subscript specified as ALL to the right of the newly incremented subscript is set to 1 to produce an implicit argument. Once again, the subscript represented by the rightmost ALL is incremented through its range of values to produce an implicit argument for each value. This process is repeated until each subscript specified as ALL has been incremented through its range of values.

For example,


     FUNCTION MAX(Table(ALL, ALL))

is equivalent to


     FUNCTION MAX(Table(1, 1) Table(1, 2) Table(1, 3)... Table(1, n)
                  Table(2, 1) Table(2, 2) Table(2, 3)... Table(2, n)
                  Table(3, 1) Table(3, 2) Table(3, 3)... Table(3, n)
                  .
                  .
                  .
                  Table(m, 1) Table(m, 2) Table(m, 3)... Table(m, n))

where n is the number of elements in the column dimension of Table, and m is the number of elements in the row dimension of Table.

ALL subscripts can be combined with literal, data-name, or index-name subscripts to reference multidimensional tables.

For example,


     FUNCTION MAX(Table(ALL, 2))

is equivalent to


     FUNCTION MAX(Table(1, 2)
                  Table(2, 2)
                  Table(3, 2)
                  .
                  .
                  .
                  Table(m, 2))

where m is the number of elements in the row dimension of Table.

If an ALL subscript is specified for an argument and the argument is reference modified, then the reference-modifier is applied to each of the implicitly specified elements of the table.

If an ALL subscript is specified for an operand that is reference-modified, the reference-modifier is applied to each of the implicitly specified elements of the table.

If the ALL subscript is associated with an OCCURS DEPENDING ON clause, the range of values is determined by the object of the OCCURS DEPENDING ON clause.

For example, given a payroll record definition such as:

01 PAYROLL. 02 PAYROLL-WEEK PIC 99. 02 PAYROLL-HOURS PIC 999 OCCURS 1 TO 52 DEPENDING ON PAYROLL-WEEK.

The following COMPUTE statements could be used to identify total year-to-date hours, the maximum hours worked in any week, and the specific week corresponding to the maximum hours:


             COMPUTE YTD-HOURS = FUNCTION SUM (PAYROLL-HOURS(ALL))
             COMPUTE MAX-HOURS = FUNCTION MAX (PAYROLL-HOURS(ALL))
             COMPUTE MAX-WEEK  = FUNCTION ORD-MAX (PAYROLL-HOURS(ALL))

In these function invocations the subscript ALL is used to reference all elements of the PAYROLL-HOURS array (depending on the execution time value of the PAYROLL-WEEK field).

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7.1.1.5 ALL Subscripting

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