Just for a little somewhat humorous light on the subject - Many years
(and COBOL versions) ago, the COBOL compiler changed its generated
code so that if the "OBJECT-COMPUTER" was specified as "IBM-370"
rather than IBM-360 (I may be a little fuzzy on the syntax) and the
length of the field was larger than 512 (again, possible fuzziness of
my memory) the generated code used MVCL rather than MVC's. There was a
great deal of consternation when the old technique of blanking a field
by setting the first byte of a field to blank, then moving the field
to itself (offset by one) failed to do anything, since the POO
description of the MVCL stated that the MVCL would do nothing except
set a condition code when the input and output areas overlapped
destructively. The complaint was shrugged off with a WAD from IBM,
since, at least at the time, the COBOL specs specifically said the
results of such a move were undefined, even though people had been
doing it for years.
Dale Miller
[email protected]
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