Determining the Attributes of Data Objects

Determining the Attributes of Data Objects

If you want to find out the data type of a data object or have to work with its attributes at runtime of your program, use the DESCRIBE statement. The syntax is as follows:

Syntax

DESCRIBE FIELD <f> [LENGTH <l>] [TYPE <t> [COMPONENTS <n>]]
[OUTPUT-LENGTH <o>] [DECIMALS <d>]
[EDIT MASK <m>].

The attributes of the data object <f> specified by the parameters of the statement are written to the variables following the parameters.

The DESCRIBE FIELDS statement has the following parameters:

Parameters	Purpose
LENGTH	Determining the Field Length
TYPE	Determining the Data Type
OUTPUT-LENGTH	Determining the Output Length
DECIMALS	Determining the Number of Decimal Places
EDIT MASK	Determining the Conversion Routine