At last!
Lloyd Fuller has made the crucial point. It should, but probably will not, put
an end to this jejune discussion.
There is no real connection between AMODE(64) and 64-bit arithmetic operations.
IBM Enterprise COBOL could support, say, 64-bit/doubleword signed binary
integer arithmetic without supporting AMODE(64); indeed it already supports
double-precision HFP arithmetic.
Its failure to support (or even hint at future support for) BFP or in
particular DFP, which could supplant traditional low-performance COBOL
packed-decimal arithmetic, does indeed raise questions about the strength of
IBM's long-term commitment to COBOL.
These things said, it must also be conceded that the important new features
that IBM has added to Enterprise COBOL, e.g., pointers and address modification
(the curious COBOL terminology for substring operations), have been very little
used. (Pointer usage, which would greatly simplify many COBOL CICS APs, is
still, for example, exiguous in them.)
IBM may have concluded, I fear correctly, that adding new technology to COBOL
is a mug's game. We techies clamor for it, but the unwashed don't use it when
it is made available.
John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
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