Hi, Ian.

IB> -=> Quoting Paul Edwards to andrew clarke <=-

[...]

IB>  PE> char-only variables.  You know what that means, don't you?  You have
IB>  PE> to read data from a file as a pure character buffer, you can't put it
IB>  PE> into structures.

IB> This has always been the case with C (COBOL is the only language which
IB> allows the programmer total control over record I/O)

Now I might disagree on both grounds. :-) I can think of another
language which won't stuff you up with that added byte problem, but I
won't mention its name because Paul will start arguing with me. :-)

And, I don't know if you mean ANSI COBOL (I can't remember what that
says, it's been many years since I got paid to write COBOL) but
certainly one mainframe compiler that I used to use would require a
structure to start on an even byte boundary and be an even number of
bytes long. At least it told you, there was a "FILLER ADDED" warning
message if you didn't suppress them. I used to make those FILLERs
explicit, and later on require my programmers to do the same, and in
fact to compile with no warnings at all.

Regards, fIM.

 * * Inventory Liquidation:  A Hystorectomy.
@EOT:

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