Suppose you have input records with numeric values stored in PD format that you want to display or print so they can be easily interpreted. PD values are stored as integers in a compressed internal format that is actually unreadable if you print or display the values.

You can use the edit features of the OUTREC statement to display the digits of the PD values as readable characters. Furthermore, you can use the edit features to insert signs, commas, decimal points and hyphens, as appropriate, to make the PD values easy to interpret.

  OUTREC FIELDS=(1,8,
    5X,
    11,6,PD,M4,
    5X,
    31,7,PD,EDIT=(SI,III,III,IIT.TTT),SIGNS=(,-),
    5X,
    41,5,PD,EDIT=(TT-TT-TTTT))

M4 is one of DFSORT's 27 pre-defined edit masks (see Table 2 ). It edits a numeric field according to the pattern SI,III,III,III,IIT.TT. EDIT=(SI,III,III,IIT.TTT) is a user-defined edit mask. It edits a numeric field according to the pattern SI,III,III,IIT.TTT. EDIT=(TT-TT-TTTT) is another user-defined edit mask. It edits a numeric field according to the pattern TT-TT-TTTT.

WEST          +15,249,008.10                 20.000     05-12-2003
EAST             -657,810.53      3,721,500,532.006     11-29-2003
NORTH                  +0.00           -982,630.735     02-15-2004
SOUTH                 -35.62         -3,826,254.999     12-03-2003

Pre-defined and user-defined edit masks give you a great deal of flexibility in how you format your numeric fields for output. You can use p,m,f,Mnn or p,m,f,EDIT=(pattern) to edit various numeric fields according to various output patterns. You can use SIGNS=(a,b,c,d) to override or set the output signs (leading positive, leading negative, trailing positive and trailing negative). You can use LENGTH=n to override or set the output length.