Specifying hexadecimal highkeys

All non-character HIGHKEYs are specified in hexadecimal. Packed decimal is a common non-character key, but there are other possibilities. Like all HIGHKEYs, hexadecimal HIGHKEYs must end in at least one hex ‘FF’.

Packed decimal keys never contain a hex ‘FF’. The last byte has a digit from 0-9 and a sign, so there is never a conflict with a HIGHKEY ending in hex ‘FF’.

With binary integer HIGHKEYs, a valid key can end in hex ‘FF’, for example, 32767 is hex '7FFF'. For this reason, HIDAM keys that are half-words or fullword binary integers are not good keys for a partitioned database. You can use a binary key with partitioned HIDAM, depending upon the application. If the binary key has “gaps” that allow a HIGHKEY to be defined that will not be used by the application.