The INITIALIZE command is used to assign constant values to target fields. Although you can assign constants to target fields using the STRING function in a mapping procedure, the INITIALIZE command is more efficient, since this initialization is performed only once, where as the STRING function is invoked for each target record written.
Note: if the INITIALIZE command is issued for a group item field, all its children are initialized.
Example
Assigning a constant to target fields using the INITIALIZE command is provided below.
INITIALIZE TARGET_FIELD1 ‘AAA’;
INITIALIZE TARGET_FIELD2 ‘BBB’;
INITIALIZE GROUP_ITEM1 ‘CCC’;