We have to find more than one way to get the ascii value of a character. On top of that we also need to get the sum of all the characters's ascii values. I currently have the below and works alright for the first section where you need individual values . I just need to know if there is an easier way or a function to do this in Cobol?
DATA DIVISION.
FILE SECTION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 WS-COUNTERS.
03 WS-COUNTER PIC 9(05).
03 WS-INPUT PIC X(01).
03 WS-DISPLAY PIC 9(03).
01 W1-ARRAY.
03 ALPHABETIC-CHARS OCCURS 26 TIMES PIC X.
01 W3-ARRAY.
03 NUMERIC-CHARS OCCURS 26 TIMES PIC X.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
A000-MAIN SECTION.
BEGIN.
PERFORM B000-INITIALIZE.
PERFORM C000-PROCESS UNTIL WS-COUNTER > 26.
PERFORM D000-END.
A099-EXIT.
STOP RUN.
B000-INITIALIZE SECTION.
ACCEPT WS-INPUT.
MOVE "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" TO W1-ARRAY.
MOVE "01234567890000000000000000" TO W3-ARRAY.
MOVE 1 TO WS-COUNTER.
MOVE 0 TO WS-DISPLAY.
B099-EXIT.
EXIT.
C000-PROCESS SECTION.
C001-BEGIN.
IF WS-INPUT IS NUMERIC
IF NUMERIC-CHARS(WS-COUNTER) = WS-INPUT
COMPUTE WS-DISPLAY = WS-COUNTER + 48 - 1
END-IF
ELSE
IF ALPHABETIC-CHARS(WS-COUNTER) = WS-INPUT
COMPUTE WS-DISPLAY = WS-COUNTER + 65 - 1
END-IF
END-IF.
ADD 1 TO WS-COUNTER.
C099-EXIT.
EXIT.
Have a look at FUNCTION ORD and keep in mind that you will get the ordinal number in the program's collating sequence (which may be EBCDIC or not the full ASCII).
As this function was introduced in the COBOL85 standard it should be available in most compilers (your question misses the compiler/machine you use).