BITSON: Determining If a Bit Is On or Off

How to:

Available Languages: reporting, Maintain

The BITSON function evaluates an individual bit within a character string to determine whether it is on or off. If the bit is on, BITSON returns a value of 1. If the bit is off, it returns a value of 0. This function is useful in interpreting multi-punch data, where each punch conveys an item of information.

Syntax: How to Determine If a Bit Is On or Off 

BITSON(bitnumber, source_string, output)

where:

bitnumber

Integer

Is the number of the bit to be evaluated, counted from the left-most bit in the character string.

source_string

Alphanumeric

Is the character string to be evaluated, enclosed in single quotation marks, or a field or variable that contains the character string. The character string is in multiple eight-bit blocks.

output

Integer

Is the name of the field that contains the result, or the format of the output value enclosed in single quotation marks.

Example: Evaluating a Bit in a Field

BITSON evaluates the 24th bit of LAST_NAME and stores the result in BIT_24: 

TABLE FILE EMPLOYEE
PRINT LAST_NAME AND COMPUTE
BIT_24/I1 = BITSON(24, LAST_NAME, BIT_24);
WHERE DEPARTMENT EQ 'MIS';
END

The output is: 

LAST_NAME        BIT_24
---------        ------
SMITH                 1
JONES                 1
MCCOY                 1
BLACKWOOD             1
GREENSPAN             1
CROSS                 0