FREE LOCATOR

The FREE LOCATOR statement removes the association between a locator variable and its value.

Invocation

This statement can only be embedded in an application program. It cannot be issued interactively. It is an executable statement that can be dynamically prepared. However, the EXECUTE statement with the USING clause must be used to execute the prepared statement. FREE LOCATOR cannot be used with the EXECUTE IMMEDIATE statement. It must not be specified in Java™ or REXX.

Authorization

None required.

Syntax

                 .-,--------.
                 V          |
>>-FREE LOCATOR----variable-+----------------------------------><
 

Description

variable,...

Identifies one or more locator variables that must be declared in accordance with the rules for declaring locator variables. The locator variable type must be a binary large object locator, a character large object locator, or a double-byte character large object locator.

The variable must currently have a locator assigned to it. That is, a locator must have been assigned during this unit of work (by a CALL, FETCH, SELECT INTO, assignment statement, SET variable, or VALUES INTO statement) and must not subsequently have been freed (by a FREE LOCATOR statement); otherwise, an error is returned.

If more than one locator variable is specified and an error occurs on one of the locators, no locators will be freed.

Example

Assume that the employee table contains columns RESUME, HISTORY, and PICTURE and that locators have been established in a program to represent the column values. In a COBOL program, free the CLOB locator variables LOCRES and LOCHIST, and the BLOB locator variable LOCPIC.

  EXEC SQL 
  FREE LOCATOR :LOCRES, :LOCHIST, :LOCPIC
  END-EXEC.