SORT-MERGE/XL Programmer's Guide (32650-90884)

Chapter 2 21

Creating Core Routines That Sort and Merge

Initializing a Sort or Merge

When programming in COBOL, you can sort and merge records directly through the

COBOL SORT and MERGE statements. These statements allow you to specify the key,

collating sequence, and ﬁle or record output to be used by the SORT-MERGE/XL utility.

For further information, refer to COBOL II Reference Manual and COBOL II/XL

Reference Manual Supplement.

You will ﬁnd FORTRAN information in Appendix D of this manual.

Creating Input Files in a Database Creating SORT-MERGE/XL input ﬁles from a

database depends on your database and access method. For information about creating

ﬁles and loading information to them from a database, refer to your database manual set.

Accessing the Input File

The SORT and MERGE intrinsics access input ﬁles through their ﬁle numbers. You pass

the identiﬁcation numbers in the

inputfiles

parameter of the HPSORTINIT or

HPMERGEINIT intrinsic. The

inputfiles

parameter is an array. The last number in the

array must be zero, as shown in the example below.

To get the ﬁle identiﬁcation numbers, open the input ﬁles with the intrinsic HPFOPEN (or

FOPEN), as in the example.

The following is from the example at the end of the chapter. The ﬁrst part opens the ﬁles

TEMPEMP and PERMEMP, and gets their ﬁle numbers, (tempFileNum and permFileNum). The

second part puts these identiﬁcation numbers in an array for the

inputfiles

parameter of

the HPSORTINIT or HPMERGEINIT intrinsics.

const

designator : 2; {HPFOPEN formaldesignator= option}

domain : 3; {HPFOPEN file domain= option}

access : 11; {used later for output file}

var

tempFileNum : INTEGER; {HPFOPEN will return}

permFileNum : INTEGER; { with file numbers }

status : INTEGER; {error check}

tempFile : packed array [1..10] of CHAR;

permFile : packed array [1..10] of CHAR;

permanent : INTEGER;

newFile := '%TEMPEMP%';

permanent := 1;{file is permanent, in system file domain}

HPFOPEN (tempFileNum, status, designator, tempFile,

domain, permanent);

PermFile := '%PERMEMP%';

HPFOPEN (permFileNum, status, designator, permFile,

domain, permanent);