Example of Connecting a File to Standard Input

 select output-file
     assign to external evar
     organization is line sequential.
  ...
 fd output-file
    record contains 80 characters.
 01 output-file-record pic x(80).
  ...
 procedure division.
     open output output-file.
     write output-file-record from "c:\dir\file".
   ...
     close output-file.
     stop run.

If, before running the above code, the following command is issued:

set evar=">cmd /c print"

then each WRITE operation on output-file is passed as input to the print command.