You can write a COBOL program to send a report directly to the printer or to transfer data across a communications port. To do this, you need to assign a device-name to your COBOL filename.
You can specify the following device-names using static, dynamic or external filename assignment:
| Device-name | Description |
|---|---|
| CON | Console keyboard or screen |
| PRN | First parallel printer |
| LPT1 | First parallel printer |
| LPT2 | Second parallel printer |
| LPT3 | Third parallel printer |
| COM1 | First asynchronous communications port |
| COM2 | Second asynchronous communications port |
When specifying any of these device-names, a trailing colon(:) is optional.
In the following example, read or write operations on fd-name cause data to be read from or written to the console screen:
select fd-name assign to "con".
In the next example, write operations on fd-name cause data to be output to lpt1:, the first parallel printer:
select fd-name assign to dynamic ws-filename. ... move "lpt1:" to ws-filename.