computer people, a technical question

[mainegreen]

Has anyone ever worked with a datatype notation that looks like this:
A signed integer 9 characters long:
s9(07)v99
or say a numeric field 5 characters long:
9(02)v999

My question to you, if anyone knows, is this: what do the freaking v9's represent? Is that the used length of the datatype (value), is that the filler, or is that some weird arbitrary mainframe nonsense I can't make heads or tails of?

It's driving me nuts, and the internet and googles is not really helping me resolve this.

x(

[PeaceNikki]

1. Micro Focus Cobol?

Just spit it out to a line sequential file and parse it that way.

This MIGHT help: http://www.csis.ul.ie/COBOL/Course/DataDeclaration.htm

[mainegreen]

2. !!!THANK YOU!!!!

That link made everything clear. It's the decimal point position. :thumbsup:

Bookmarking that.

:hi:

[PeaceNikki]

3. Cobol is evil.

We wrote apps that convert Cobol to SQL.

I was more the SQL side, the guy who did the Cobol data mapping is no longer here. In fact, every programmer who knows Cobol is retired in Copa.