NATIVE phrase

By using the NATIVE phrase, you can mix characters and floating-point data as represented on the z/OS® or OS/390® and AIX platforms. The NATIVE phrase overrides the CHAR(EBCDIC) and FLOAT(HEX) compiler options, which indicate host data type usages.

The use of both host and native data types within a program (ASCII and EBCDIC, and Hex Floating-point and IEEE floating-point) is valid only for those data items specifically defined with the NATIVE phrase.

Specifying NATIVE does not change the class or the category of the data item.

Numeric data items are processed in arithmetic operations (numeric comparisons, arithmetic expressions, assignment to numeric targets, arithmetic statements) based on their logical numeric values, regardless of their internal representations.

Characters are converted to the representation of the target item prior to an assignment.

Comparisons are done based on the collating sequence rules applicable to the operands. If native and non-native alphanumeric or DBCS characters are compared, the comparison is based on the COLLSEQ option in effect.