karron@KARRON.MED.NYU.EDU ("Dan Karron ") (11/27/90)
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. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | karron@nyu.edu (E-mail alias that will always find me) | | * Dan Karron, Research Associate | | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * New York University Medical Center | | 560 First Avenue \*\ Pager <1> (212) 397 9330 | | New York, New York 10016 \**\ <2> 10896 <3> <your-number-here> | | (212) 340 5210 \***\_________________________________________ | | Main machine: karron.med.nyu.edu (128.122.135.3) IRIS 85GT | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+