Field Types
FML fields and fielded buffers are typed. They can be any of the standard C language types: short, long--> float, double, and char. The following types are also supported: string (a series of characters ending with a null character), carray (a character array), ptr (a pointer to a buffer), FML32 (an embedded FML32 buffer), and VIEW32 (an embedded VIEW32 buffer). The ptr, FML32, and VIEW32 types are only supported for the FML32 interface. The corresponding types in COBOL are COMP-5, COMP-1, COMP-2 and PIC X. A C packed decimal type is also supported in VIEWS for integration with COBOL COMP-3.
VIEWS
VIEWS is a facility of the Field Manipulation Language that allows the exchange of data between fielded buffers and C structures or COBOL records, by specifying mappings of fields to members of structures/records. If extensive manipulations of fielded buffer information are to be done, transferring the data to structures will improve performance. Information in a fielded buffer can be extracted from the fields in the buffer and placed in a structure using VIEWS functions, manipulated, and the updated values returned to the buffer, again using VIEWS functions. VIEWS can also be used independently of FML, particularly in support of COBOL records.
