Example of Redefines clause:

This illustration describes a sales record that may either contain the total amount of sale or the quantity (QTY) and UNIT-PRICE. The aim of such description may be to have two types of records and their types may be determined from the data item named SALES-TYPE. Based on some predetermined values of SALES-TYPE the record will be interpreted in one of the two forms, Note that the SALES-BY-UNIT and TOTAL-SALES refer to the similar storage space. They actually represent two different mappings of the similar storage region.

The REDEFINES clause as explained above is quite common in use. Though, the clause may be simply used for the aim of conservation of storage space possibly in the working-storage section. In such situations two records having no meaningful connection between them can also be used to share similar storage space provided both of them are not used in the program concurrently. The syntax of the REDEFINES clause is as shown below:

Level-number daa-name-1 REDEFINES data-name-2