PDw.d Format: UNIX

The PDw.d format writes values in packed decimal format. In packed decimal data, each byte contains two digits. The w value represents the number of bytes, not the number of digits. The value's sign is the first byte. Because the entire first byte is used for the sign, you should specify at least a width of 2.

The PDw.d format writes missing numerical data as –0. When the PDw.d informat reads a value of –0, the result is a value of 0.

For more information, see Reading and Writing Binary Data in UNIX Environments.