Syntax of the TRANSFORM option—FIELD keyword

The variables are:

• s is the starting position within the expression result relative to position one.
• l is the length of the output data in bytes.

• t is the output data type.

  The data type is optional and defaults to character (C) if not specified.

  The valid data types are:

  • C (character string data)
  • F (fixed point binary numeric data)
  • P (packed decimal numeric data)
  • U (unsigned packed decimal numeric data)
  • X (hexadecimal data)
  • Z (zoned decimal numeric data)

The parentheses enclosing the TRANSFORM specification are required. Blanks can be used anywhere within a TRANSFORM specification.

The starting position refers to the expression result, not the output. It is only applicable to character results, or values formatted by % format specifications such as dates and times. For all other data types, the entire value is transformed and s is ignored.

The length of the source is always the length of the actual expression result (adjusted for the value of s for character and formatted data).

The length and type of the output data is determined by the TRANSFORM specification values for l and t.