If you use the BUILD, FIELDS, or IFTHEN BUILD parameter, you must begin your INREC or OUTREC statement fields by specifying 1,4 (starting position is 1 and length is 4) to represent the RDW in your VB records. For example:

  INREC FIELDS=(1,4,8,25)

If you want your first field to include input data bytes immediately after the RDW (that is, starting with position 5), you can use 1,n (starting position is 1 and length is n, with n greater than 4) instead of 1,4. For example:

  OUTREC BUILD=(1,10,21,30)

If you want to display the record length (from positions 1-2 in the RDW), you can use 1,4 to represent the RDW followed by 1,2 for the record length. For example:

  INREC FIELDS=(1,4,C'Record length is ',1,2,BI,M11)

If you use the OVERLAY, IFTHEN OVERLAY, or IFTHEN PUSH parameter of INREC or OUTREC, you must not overlay the RDW in positions 1-4. So all of your items must start at or after position 5. For example:

    INREC OVERLAY=(5:5,3,TRAN=UTOL,21:18,2,11:C'***')  

converts the input field at positions 5-7 to lowercase. If you forget to specify c: for the first item, c will default to 1 which will result in an error message because you would be overlaying the RDW. For example:

    INREC OVERLAY=(5,3,TRAN=UTOL)   Results in an error message

is interpreted as overlaying output positions 1-3 with the lowercase conversion of input positions 5-7. Since you cannot overlay positions 1-4, you will get an error message .

Be careful not to use 1:, 2:, 3: or 4: for any OVERLAY, IFTHEN OVERLAY, or IFTHEN PUSH item. For example, the following will also result in an error message, since the second item would overlay the RDW:

    OUTREC OVERLAY=(8:5,3,TRAN=UTOL,   ok
       2:18,2)      Results in an error message