If you haven't gotten an answer to your question, here's another.

  2      FILE-CONTROL.
  2.1        SELECT OPTIONAL FILE99 ASSIGN TO "FILE99,DA,A,,10000".
  2.2    DATA DIVISION.
  2.3
  2.4    FILE SECTION.
  2.5    FD FILE99
  2.6       BLOCK CONTAINS 10 RECORDS
  2.7       RECORDING MODE IS F.
  2.8    01 FILE99-DATA   PIC X(123).

The "DA" in the ASSIGN specifies DIRECT ACCESS which implies a
mass-storage device. The "A" after the "DA" is the ASCII/BINARY
specifier. The "10000" in ASSIGN specifies the record limit.
In the FILE SECTION, FD Entry, "BLOCK CONTAINS 10 RECORDS" specifies the
block factor. "RECORDING MODE IS F" specifies FIXED length records. The
Record length is determined by the size of the data record.

I hope this helps,
John Zoltak
North American Mfg Co


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stigers, Greg ~ AND [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, April 02, 1998 2:42 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      [HP3000-L] Dynamic file creation
>
> I want to be able to dynamically create a (numbered) file with
> particular attributes. I thought that by specifying OPTIONAL in the
> SELECT statement, this would not be a problem, so long as I specified
> the build paramaters elsewhere. I am having difficulty finding the
> elsewhere, where I specify, for instance
> FILE99;REC=-123,,F,ASCII;DISC=999999. Of course, I thought that this
> would be easy to find... Would the build parameters come after the the
> filename in the WORKING STORAGE description of the USING identifier?
> Or
> in the ASSIGN? Also, do I need a declarative to keep the program from
> aborting when the OPTIONAL file does not already exist? Or is this
> even
> necessary since I am OPENing the file OUTPUT?