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From: karron@KARRON.MED.NYU.EDU ("Dan Karron ")
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Picture numbers...
Message-ID: <9011270016.AA27093@karron.med.nyu.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 90 00:16:38 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: karron%CMCL2.NYU.EDU@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18


Picture spec are a Cobol/Pl1 way to get a number to format exactly the
way you want for output in, say, a financial statment. You can get
things like (999.99) parens around a negative number, commas after
a number of digits "999,999,999.99", floating,fixed signs, dollar
symbols, and other things that the biz world likes to see. It has been a while
since I used Cobol, but it is one of the things that I miss from that world.

Dan.
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