Why you should care
While describing a PICTURE, once the length of a sequence exceeds 3 characters, use the factorized notation. Edition pictures (presence of Z) are not concerned.
How we detect
CAST Highlight counts one occurrence each time in the WORKING SECTION a PICTURE description not containing “Z” exceed sequences of more than three characters. In the following patterns, where sequences do not contain parentheses:
- PIC <sequence 1>
- PIC S<sequence 1>
- PIC <sequence 1>V<sequence 2>
- PIC S<sequence 1>V<sequence 2>
The length of <sequence 1> and <sequence 2> (if any) should not exceed 3 characters, excluding s if present.
Bad Code
PIC 9999 PIC 9999V9 PIC s9999V9 PIC XXXX
Good Code
PIC 9(4) PIC 9(4)V9 PIC s9(4)V9 PIC X(4) PIC s999 PIC 9(7)V99999999999
References
Coming soon…
About CAST and Highlight’s Code Insights
Over the last 25 years, CAST has leveraged unique knowledge on software quality measurement by analyzing thousands of applications and billions of lines of code. Based on this experience and community standards on programming best practices, Highlight implements hundreds of code insights across 15+ technologies to calculate health factors of a software.