>
> That's because COBOL doesn't have "strings" per se, but rather
> "pre-allocated blocks of memory to be treated as character-based data".
> There are convolute methods [some even shown in this thread] to deal with
> these memory blocks "as if" they were "strings" as defined by more
> modern-day languages, but the simple fact remains that if your "source"
> memory block is defined as 30 characters, taking the right-most 4 characters
> of, say, "TOM EMERSON                   " is going to result in "    " for
> most of the methods you try...
>
> (the only ones that will get "RSON" will be ones that explicitly look for
> the LAST non-blank character...)
>
I guess I am missing something here.  AIR when I wanted to find the
right
most X characters in a field I MOVEd the item to a field defined as
right
justified and then picked the X characters out of that field.  The only
problem came if I wanted no blanks and the non blank characters were
less than X.

Am I missing something?

Nick D.