Rules for Indicator Variables - Teradata Preprocessor2

Teradata® Preprocessor2 for Embedded SQL Programmer Guide

Product
Teradata Preprocessor2
Release Number
17.00
Published
June 2020
Language
English (United States)
Last Update
2020-06-19
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B035-2446
lifecycle
previous
Product Category
Teradata Tools and Utilities
Number Contained in Indicator Variable Specification to the Application
A negative number (most commonly -1) The associated input main variable should be treated as a null. Alternatively, it means the database returned a null for the associated column.
Zero The associated input main variable is non-null or that a non-null value was successfully returned with no exception conditions applied.
A positive number Truncation has occurred when returning a character or byte string to the associated main variable. This value represents the original length of the string before truncation.

An indicator variable is defined as a two byte integer (smallint). In PL/I, this is declared as:

DCL  identifier  FIXED BIN[ARY][(n)];

With this declaration, integer n must be positive, such that 1 ≤ n ≤ 15. If n is not specified, a default of 15 is used.