On 08/03/2012 10:40 AM, Charles Mills wrote:
Is anyone a COBOL syntax expert? Is the following valid? (It's not a trick
question: there are no obscure PARM= options and nothing remarkable precedes
the fragment below.) It's not an academic question. The code is accepted
without error by the IBM Enterprise COBOL compiler V4.1, but not by a
proprietary pre-processor, and I'm trying to figure out if the code should
change or if the preprocessor is in error. Changing the code is not trivial:
multiple programs like this, corporate change control processes, etc., etc.
I think it's invalid, that the '.' strings are syntactically-invalid
character literals. Am I missing something?
Starting hint: The REMARKS paragraph heading is only a * comment and not
syntactically significant (I think).
Best viewed in a fixed-width font like Courier. FYI if you can't view it
that way, the leading quote in lines 20-23 is in CC 12 and the trailing
quote in CC 72.
Card columns:
1 2 3 6 7
1234567890123456789012345678901...0123456789012
00020 *REMARKS.
00021 '******************* ************'
00022 '* VARIOUS COMMENT-LIKE TEXT *'
00023 '* VARIOUS COMMENT-LIKE TEXT *'
Thanks for your help.
Charles
See the COBOL Migration Guide GC23-8527-01:
"REMARKS paragraph -- OS/VS COBOL accepted the REMARKS paragraph.
Enterprise COBOL does not accept the REMARKS paragraph. As a
replacement, use comment lines beginning with an * in column 7."
And from the COBOL Language Reference:
"A comment line is any line with an asterisk (*) or slash (/) in the
indicator area (column 7) of the line. The comment can be written
anywhere in Area A and Area B of that line, and can consist of any
combination of characters from the character set of the computer."
...
"Multiple comment lines are allowed. Each must begin with either an
asterisk (*) or a slash (/) in the indicator area."
From the current language reference, I would say that line 20 is a
valid comment, lines 21-23 are not. Perhaps the IBM Compiler still has
some residual (and undocumented?) compatibility support for the obsolete
"REMARKS" paragraph and is tolerating the lines because of that.
--
Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR [email protected]
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