Ernie,



How about putting the whole thing inside single-quotes?



VALUE '"item one", "item two","","","item three"'.



This works fine if the value is static. If <item one>, etc. are variables, you should look into using the STRING statement.



STRING '"' DELIMITED BY SIZE

       ITEM-ONE DELIMITED BY SIZE

      '","' DELIMITED BY SIZE

      ITEM-TWO DELIMITED BY SIZE

       '","","","' DELIMITED BY SIZE

       ITEM-THREE DELIMITED BY SIZE

       '"'

INTO TARGET-VAR.



There is more to it than this but should get you started.



HTH

François



-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Newton, Ernie
Sent: September-03-15 1:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [HP3000-L] Fun with COBOL



Greetings,



It's been a long time since I wrote COBOL, and I have an elementary question about creating a comma-delimited file.



If I want...



"item one", "item two","","","item three"



How do I create the "," between item one and item two?  Is it simply PIC "","" (quote comma quote inside double quotes?)



And the ","",""," would it be the same?  Just put that inside double quotes?



Something tells me that there is an escape sequence, but the mind is not cooperating.



Thanks,



Ernie



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