I am helping support a customer that has XBOL which generates COBOL. The
original developer has passed away, but my client has the source. We
have had to make changes for 'gone' COBOL verbs and such.
I don't think CA's MetaCobol is currently marketed. I talked to them
several years ago about it.
I personally wrote and use a COBOL "pre-compiler" that handles a few
things for me:
1) It let's you specify Working Storage, Linkage Section and Procedural
Section in any COBOL copybook. It re-orders the generated code so that
the parts are plugged into the output source in the right order. This
makes it easy to put things like date routines within the program when
such routines require working storage fields to do their calculations.
2) It calls 'calls' the CICS pre-processor before generating the final
code. z/VSE does not have such an option currently.
I do have some more I want to do with it, but have not had the time. I
would like it to be more "macro like" for such things as BMS screens.
Tony Thigpen
Farley, Peter x23353 wrote on 4/5/21 12:30 PM:
True. There is m4 in *ix systems and going back a long time there was ML/1 (I
think there was an academic book published on that one, I think I have a copy
somewhere around here). Undoubtedly others I do not know of or remember.
Probably also Wirth's "literate programming" suite, TeX I think it is called.
But IMHO none easy to learn or use.
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
Charles Mills
Sent: Monday, April 5, 2021 12:20 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Assembler Language Programming for IBM System z Servers
Aren't there "generic" meta languages: meta languages that may be used to
generate any sort of text, including source code for most any language?
Charles
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Farley, Peter x23353
Sent: Monday, April 5, 2021 8:47 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Assembler Language Programming for IBM System z Servers
True for the language itself, but at least one ISV addressed that lack -- the
MetaCOBOL product. I have forgotten who the original vendor ISV was - maybe
ADR? -- but I think it now resides somewhere in the CA / Broadcom universe.
IMHO PL/1 (and no doubt the PL/X internal IBM language from the little we see
of it in SYS1.MACLIB) has the most powerful language-defined preprocessor. One
could wish for a similar language-defined capability for COBOL, not that it
will ever happen.
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
Charles Mills
Sent: Monday, April 5, 2021 11:15 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Assembler Language Programming for IBM System z Servers
The literal answer to your question is COPY. Assembler COPY is completely the
analog of COBOL COPY.
Assembler COPY is less powerful than COBOL COPY: there is no COPY REPLACING in
assembler.
OTOH, Assembler has macros, which are like COPY but much, much more powerful.
I am going to go out on a limb -- someone will surely correct me -- and say that COBOL is unique or at least
atypical among modern "powerful" programming languages in that it has no real preprocessor
language. There is no "meta" programming (to speak of) in COBOL. No real way to "dynamically
construct" a program at compile time.
Charles
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Warren Brown
Sent: Monday, April 5, 2021 7:22 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Assembler Language Programming for IBM System z Servers
Hello,
I've been away for a while. What is the assembly language equivalent for a
COBOL copybook?
Thanks,
Warren
On Monday, March 29, 2021, 11:08:43 AM EDT, Wendell Lovewell
<000001e9c0ee0673-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
Hello all.
Does anyone know if Dr Ehrman's excellent assembler book could be updated for
the new instructions released since 2015? Or, at least refreshed with current
standards for PDF-page generation standards?
What I mean is, it would really be helpful if:
a) The pages in the Table of Contents were hyperlinks to the actual pages
referenced, and
b) The page numbers in the TOC matched the page numbers in the PDF file. For example,
"MVCLE" is listed in the TOC on page 411. But if you alt-g to go to the 411th page in
the PDF, you end up on the page displaying "373" at the bottom.
More recent manuals "document" page numbers match the "pdf" page numbers. But
as best I can tell Dr. Ehrman's book hasn't been updated to reflect this.
Is there any chance someone from IBM is reading this & can do something about
this? Please?
(I know this might make more sense to post on the Assembler list, but I'm
guessing it's more likely to be seen here.)
TIA,
Wendell
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