Re: TESTN v CHECK

[Buck <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I have been asked to replace TESTN with CHECK.  
> Is this a performance issue or someone's personal preference?

TESTN tests a character field to see if it is a number according to 
punched card rules.  Read the manual for details, but in essence if the 
final character is J-R or a left curly brace, the value is treated as 
though it were a negative number.  See also the manual entry for MOVE.

CHECK tests a character field to see if it contains characters you 
specify.  That may be numeric or not (i.e. a leading hyphen or a decimal 
point may be acceptable in your application now, where they weren't before.)

Afraid I can't comment on the requester's motives, but simply changing 
from TESTN to CHECK doesn't seem particularly useful unless the 
mechanism for converting from character to numeric changes as well.
  --buck