Inspect for traling spaces

[vinothkumar]

Hi ,

is ther any function to get the trailing spaces in the cobol..
i tried with inspect reverse but the reverse functionality is not supported with my version .. pls let me know is ther any other functionality for this
thanks ..

[Terry Wincheste]

Re: Inspect for traling spaces

Your post is not clear.

What do you mean by "get" the trailing spaces? Do you want to trim them, count the number of spaces...or what are you trying to accomplish?

To trim, you can use the FUNCTION TRIM().

[vinothkumar]

Re: Inspect for traling spaces

hi terry ,

thanks for ur reply ..

i want to replace the trailing spaces alone with some other character
frg ws-variable = 'as 213 ' to 'as 213%% '

( i want to do it in cobol/400)

thanks
vinoth

[Terry Wincheste]

Re: Inspect for traling spaces

If your restricted to non-ILE Cobol, then the best method is to move your string to an array, then process the array backwards and replace each space with a the new value.

You just have to remember to terminate your process as soon as you encounter your first non-space character. Here is a simple example:

working-storage section.                                       
01  ws-variable            pic  x(12)     value 'as 123     '. 
01  ws-len                 pic s9(03)     value +0.            

move length of ws-variable to ws-len 
                                     
perform until ws-len < 1               
or ws-variable (ws-len:1) not = space  
    move '%' to ws-variable (ws-len:1) 
    subtract 1 from ws-len             
end-perform