Unstring in Cobol
I Am Trying to Split a Name Field into Three Parts into First Name, Mid Name, Last Name by Using Unstring Delimited by Spaces as Follows Unstring Wa-Name...
I am trying to split a name field into three parts into first name, mid name, last name by using UNSTRING DELIMITED BY SPACES as follows
UNSTRING WA-NAME DELIMITED BY SPACES
INTO WA-FIRST-NAME
WA-MID-NAME
WA-LAST-NAME
But if my name field has more than 2 spaces the remaining words are getting missed
Example : NAME : M V S PAVAN
It is showing as WA-FIRST-NAME : M
WA-MID-NAME : V
WA-LAST-NAME : S
But the fourth word PAVAN is missing how can i get that included in my third word. i.e, i want to include all the remaining words in WA-LAST-NAME
2 Answers
To just solve the question "how can i get that included in my third word. i.e, i want to include all the remaining words in WA-LAST-NAME" (which may not be what you want) you can use different approaches but the best ones likely will use the POINTER (position in source field). It may uses an additional counter for the last item, leading to:
UNSTRING WA-NAME DELIMITED BY ALL SPACES *> just in case two spaces were used
INTO WA-FIRST-NAME
WA-MID-NAME
WA-LAST-NAME COUNT STRPV *> *MOVE* the amount of target length
WITH POINTER STRPS ON OVERFLOW
ADD 2 TO STRPV *> adding one to be after the text, another for space
MOVE WA-NAME (STRPS:) TO WA-LAST-NAME (STRPV:)
Complete test:
As donPablo already pointed out you won't get an 100% automated correct name result...
Use POINTER to keep track of where you are at, but split the UNSTRING into three UNSTRINGs. Before each unstring loop using stored POINTER to first non-space (i.e. PERFORM VARYING from current pointer by 1 UNTIL value is not space OR end of string) and unstring from there.
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