Standard way to remove spaces from input in cobol?

cobol gnucobol

30,114

Solution 1

One would hope for a more elegant way of simply trimming text strings but this is pretty much the standard solution... The trimming part is done in the SHOW-TEXT paragraph.


      *************************************                    
      * TRIM A STRING... THE HARD WAY...                       
      *************************************                    
       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.                                
       PROGRAM-ID. TESTX.                                      
       DATA DIVISION.                                          
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.                                
       01  USER-INPUT         PIC X(30).                       
       01  I                  PIC S9(4) BINARY.                
       PROCEDURE DIVISION.                                     
           MOVE SPACES TO USER-INPUT                           
           PERFORM SHOW-TEXT                                   

           MOVE '  A B C' TO USER-INPUT                        
           PERFORM SHOW-TEXT                                   

           MOVE 'USE ALL 30 CHARACTERS -------X' TO USER-INPUT 
           PERFORM SHOW-TEXT                                 
           GOBACK                                            
           .                                                 
       SHOW-TEXT.                                            
           PERFORM VARYING I FROM LENGTH OF USER-INPUT BY -1 
                     UNTIL I LESS THAN 1 OR USER-INPUT(I:1) NOT = ' '
           END-PERFORM                                       
           IF I > ZERO                                       
              DISPLAY USER-INPUT(1:I) '@ OTHER STUFF'        
           ELSE                                              
              DISPLAY '@ OTHER STUFF'                        
           END-IF                                            
           .

Produces the following output:


@ OTHER STUFF                              
  A B C@ OTHER STUFF                       
USE ALL 30 CHARACTERS -------X@ OTHER STUFF

Note that the PERFORM VARYING statement relies on the left to right evaluation of the UNTIL clause to avoid out-of-bounds subscripting on USER-INPUT in the case where it contains only blank spaces.

Solution 2

Use OpenCOBOL 1.1 or greater.

 Identification division.
 Program-id. 'trimtest'.
*> Compile:
*> cobc -x -free -ffunctions-all  TrimTest.cbl
*>
 Data division.
 Working-Storage Section.
1 myBigStr Pic X(32768) Value Spaces.

 Procedure Division.

Display "Enter Something? " With no advancing.
Accept myBigStr.
Display "[" Trim(myBigStr) "]".
Goback.

The trim function also has the options; Leading or Trailing. cobc -h formore info.

Solution 3

Here's a solution if you work on OpenVMS:

   01 WS-STRING-LENGTH                 PIC S9(04) COMP.

   CALL "STR$TRIM" USING BY DESCRIPTOR user_output,
                                       user_input,
                                       BY REFERENCE WS-STRING-LENGTH.

30,114

Author by

Shawn J. Goff

I've grown up with computers around me my whole life. I started programming when I was a kid, and stuck with it ever since. I came across Linux around 1999 and have enjoyed working with it ever since. For a job, I get to write software that runs on embedded Linux devices. I do everything from working on low-level drivers to writing shell scripts and even web apps.

Updated on July 09, 2022

Comments

Shawn J. Goff almost 2 years
I'm just learning COBOL; I'm writing a program that simply echos back user input. I have defined a variable as:
```
User-Input PIC X(30).
```
Later when I ACCEPT User-Input, then DISPLAY User-Input " plus some extra text", it has a bunch of spaces to fill the 30 characters. Is there a standard way (like Ruby's str.strip!) to remove the extra spaces?
NealB over 14 years

Note: In the above answer I assumed that you wanted to remove trailing spaces only. If you want to remove leading spaces, a similar approach can be used starting at the front of USER-INPUT or you could try playing with the INSPECT verb with TALLYING and LEADING modifiers. Sorry, but sting management is not one of COBOL's strong points.
Luc M over 14 years

With this solution, the content of user-input won't be completely displayed if it contains a space in the middle.
Rick Smith about 6 years

" this is pretty much the standard solution", except LENGTH OF is a non-standard extension.
mckenzm over 5 years

+1 for System Service call, sorry to necro comment but for z/OS with DB2 there are dirty ways using embedded SQL without table access as well.
Benedikt Böhm over 3 years

Gives me an error: 'Trim' is not defined Think, you are missing a "function" before "trim", so second to last line should be Display "[" function Trim(myBigStr) "]".