How to delete variable leading zeros in Cobol program?

Question

In the Cobol language: I use a numeric variable that is initially defined as the size. If the user typed a number smaller than the size I declared, there are unnecessary zeros at the beginning. How do I delete leading zeros in the variable?

This is what I did: but it didn't work

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.

PROGRAM-ID. REMOVE.

AUTHOR. TZS.

DATA DIVISION.

WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.

01 VN-CONSTANT PIC 9(2) VALUE 5.

01 VN-NUM PIC 9(5).

01 VA-STNUM PIC X(5).

01 VN-NUM-OF-SPACES PIC 9.

01 VA-ENDNUM PIC X(5).

01 VA-RESULT PIC X(4).

PROCEDURE DIVISION.

DISPLAY 'ENTER A NUMBER UP TO 5 DIGIT:'.

ACCEPT VN-NUM.

PERFORM CALL-CHECK-NO-SPACES.

STOP RUN.

CALL-CHECK-NO-SPACES.

MOVE VN-NUM TO VA-STNUM.

INSPECT VA-STNUM TALLYING VN-NUM-OF-SPACES

FOR LEADING SPACES

DISPLAY VN-NUM-OF-SPACES

IF VN-NUM-OF-SPACES NOT EQUAL TO 0

SUBTRACT VN-NUM-OF-SPACES FROM VN-CONSTANT.

COMPUTE VN-NUM-OF-SPACES = VN-NUM-OF-SPACES + 1.

MOVE VA-STNUM ( VN-NUM-OF-SPACES : VN-CONSTANT )

TO VA-ENDNUM.

DISPLAY '_NO-SPACES__' VA-ENDNUM.

DISPLAY 'VN-NUM___' VA-STNUM.

DISPLAY '_VA-NUM__' VA-STNUM.

consider use of MOVE FUNCTION NUMVAL(ACCPT-NUM) TO USED-NUM ... or even TO ACCPT-NUM. — Simon Sobisch
– Simon Sobisch, Commented Sep 12, 2023 at 12:00

user22539990 · Accepted Answer · 2023-09-12 15:28:41Z

1

No need to do all that you did. Just define your final data item with leading Z to suppress the zeros automatically for you.

Example:

01 VA-ENDNUM PIC ZZZZ9.

or this is also correct:

01 VA-ENDNUM PIC Z(4)9.

The Z suppresses leading zeros. The '9' represents a number that will never be suppressed. (In other words, your data item is actually 5 characters with the 5th one being a numeric value of 0-9.) I hope this helps.

For more information - check out the link below:

IBM COBOL Data Definitions

answered Sep 12, 2023 at 15:28

user22539990

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