The ANY LENGTH Clause

General Format

  ANY LENGTH

The ANY LENGTH clause must be specified only in an elementary level 1 entry in the Linkage Section of a function, of a contained program, or of a method that is not a property method.
Note: The ANY LENGTH clause is not permitted to be specified in an outermost program. This is because an outermost program can be called with or without a program-prototype format CALL statement. For calls without a program-prototype, the implementation is not able to determine whether an argument corresponds to a formal parameter described with ANY LENGTH.
If the source element containing the ANY LENGTH clause is a contained program or is a method, the subject of the entry must be referenced in its PROCEDURE DIVISION header as either
1. A formal parameter with the BY REFERENCE phrase, or
2. The returning item.
If the source element containing the ANY LENGTH clause is a function, the subject of the entry must be referenced in its PROCEDURE DIVISION header as a formal parameter with the BY REFERENCE phrase.
A PICTURE clause must be specified for the subject of the entry, and the character-string specified in the PICTURE clause must be one instance of the picture symbols 'N' or 'X'.

The ANY LENGTH clause specifies that the subject of the entry must be:
1. A zero-length item when the corresponding argument or returning item of the activating runtime element is a zero-length item, or
2. Treated as though there were n repetitions of the picture symbol in the character-string in its PICTURE clause, where n is the length of the corresponding argument or returning item of the activating runtime element.