BITs problem in COBOL – (Mainframe appli

I have done the coding of PL/I to COBOl conversion and having a problem of dealing with the BIT data type of PL/I.

I managed to convert the byte into a bit-stream after reading the data into the COBOl variables. This particular byte in PL/I represents a number which doesn’t look like a number actually. But in PL/I this is easily solved by a simple assignment statement i.e., move the BITs value to a variable of data type DECIMAL. I think this assignment internally converts this bit-stream into a valid decimal value. This type of conversion is not supported in COBOl.

Please help me in cracking this problem.

-Chandra