HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Chapter 4 LANGUAGES HP COBOL II/XL Enhancements by Jan Merrill Systems Technology Division This version of the HP COBOL II/XL compiler has been enhanced with several new features and improvements. Two of the features are HP extensions to ANSI COBOL'85. These features are similar to corresponding features documented in the X/Open Portability Guide Issue 3. The third improvement provides better reporting of nonstandard COBOL features when you use the $CONTROL STDWARN compiler option. For more information on these new enhancements, refer to the related article in the "Technical Articles" section in this Communicator. DYNAMIC FILE ASSIGNMENT With the new dynamic file assignment enhancement of the HP COBOL II/XL compiler, you can assign logical files to physical files or devices at run time. For example, you can write a utility program that processes a list of file names, or a menu program that processes files selected by the user at run time. The file assignment can be changed during the course of program execution. SPECIAL REGISTER FOR INTERPROGRAM COMMUNICATION The HP COBOL II/XL compiler includes a new special register that can be set in a called program and referenced by the invoking program. The invoking program can access the special register by calling the subprogram with the GIVING phrase. The special register, called RETURN-CODE, is defined as PICTURE S9(9) BINARY. The special register allows you to use a COBOL subprogram as a function, similar to an HP Pascal or HP C function. IMPROVED REPORTING OF NONSTANDARD COBOL FEATURES The $CONTROL STDWARN compiler option requests that the compiler detect and flag HP extensions to standard COBOL. These are features in your source file that are part of COBOL II, but are not part of one of three levels of Federal Standard COBOL (FIPS). For any nonstandard COBOL features, the compiler displays warning messages with message numbers in the range 500 to 899. The compiler was modified to accurately indicate the line number, sequence number, and column number of the first letter of the word or phrase detected as a nonstandard feature. The compiler also flags occurrences of the two new enhancements included in this version of the compiler.