HP 3000 Manuals

DICTIONARY 3000

Chapter 7  THE DICTIONARY DICTCDE UTILITY 

OVERVIEW 

DICTCDE, the COBOL Definition Extract Utility, is an interactive,
prompt-driven utility provided by Dictionary/3000.  This utility extracts
data and file definitions from the Dictionary and generates the
corresponding COBOL source code for the data definitions.  When a parent
entity is extracted from the Dictionary, DICTCDE also generates the code
for any related child entities.  The entities extracted from the
Dictionary can be generated by their primary names or by their aliases.
(Refer to Changing the DICTCDE Options discussed later in this section
for more information on using the entities' aliases.)  As the source code
is generated, it is echoed to the terminal and written to the COBOL
copylib that you specify.

When source code is generated for an entity, DICTCDE checks that the
entity name and data type as defined in the Dictionary for that entity
are compatible with COBOL. If the data type for the entity is not COBOL
compatible, DICTCDE will issue a warning message and convert the data
type to compatible COBOL code.  (See COBOL Data Type Mappings later in
this section for more detailed information.)  If the entity name as
defined in the Dictionary is an illegal COBOL name (for instance, if the
name begins with a hyphen) or the entity name is a COBOL reserved word,
DICTCDE will issue a warning message and convert the name to a legal
COBOL name.  (See DICTCDE Naming Considerations later in this section for
more detailed information.)

DICTCDE also provides an interactive help facility which gives a brief
description of the DICTCDE prompts and a set of options which allows you
to change the defaults used by DICTCDE.

This section describes how to run DICTCDE and use its help facility,
defines the options that can be changed, and gives examples of the source
code generated by DICTCDE.

Special Character Responses 

The following characters have special meaning when used in response to a
DICTCDE prompt:

]                         the previous prompt issued is redisplayed.  It
                          does not affect any source code that has
                          already been generated.

]]                        the main prompt is reissued.  This prompt
                          allows you to generate code, change the program
                          options, or exit DICTCDE. (This prompt is
                          discussed later in this section.)

!                         DICTCDE responds as if you had pressed
                          [[RETURN]] in response to all prompts that
                          follow for that prompting cycle.  A prompting
                          cycle is complete when the main prompt is
                          reissued.

[[CONTROL]] Y             the main prompt is reissued (as with ]]).

?                         the Help facility is invoked for a description
                          of a prompt.

:mpecommand               the MPE command is executed without leaving
                          DICTCDE.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation