You can copy bit values up to the size of an ABL INTEGER from one INTEGER value to another. The statement to copy bit values to an INTEGER variable, PUT-BITS, has the following syntax:

This statement interprets an integer (integer-expression) as the sequence of bits representing the binary value of integer-expression. For example, if the value of integer-expression is 22, the bit sequence is 10110. The statement interprets the INTEGER variable, destination, as a sequence of bits and writes the sequence of bits from integer-expression into destination, starting at the specified bit position (start-position). The bit position in destination is counted from the low-order bit, where the first bit is bit one (1). If the value of integer-expression is too large to store in the specified number of bits, ABL stores the low-order count bits of integer-expression in the specified count bits within destination.

The function to return some number of bits from an INTEGER variable, GET-BITS, has the following syntax:

This function returns the INTEGER that represents the value of the number of bits specified by count starting at the specified low-order bit position (start-position) within the INTEGER variable specified by source.

Thus, you can store bit values in MEMPTR variables and return bit values from MEMPTR variables by using the PUT-LONG statement and GET-LONG function to store and return the corresponding INTEGER expression that contains the bit pattern.