Issues with ANDs and ORs (COBOL)

cobol logical-operators
Kimmy1235 picture Kimmy1235 · Dec 3, 2010 · Viewed 40.6k times · Source

I can't seem to get this one part right. I was given a input file with a bunch of names, some of which I need to skip, with extra information on each one. I was trying use ANDs and ORs to skip over the names I did not need and I came up with this.

IF DL-CLASS-STANDING = 'First Yr' OR 'Second Yr' AND
GRAD-STAT-IN = ' ' OR 'X'

It got rid of all but one person, but when I tried to add another set of ANDs and ORs the program started acting like the stipulations where not even there.

Did I make it too complex for the compiler? Is there an easier way to skip over things?

Answer

Joel Spolsky picture Joel Spolsky · Dec 3, 2010

Try adding some parentheses to group things logically:

IF (DL-CLASS-STANDING = 'First Yr' OR 'Second Yr') AND (GRAD-STAT-IN = ' ' OR 'X')

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