My opinion on your "level" question. 01 level is generally used to group together related storage or variables. Each 01 level starts a new storage area on a doubleword boundary. 77 levels are generally used for "independent" variables such as loop counters or maybe accumulators of some sort.
Something "new" you might want to review is the use of WORKING STORAGE versus LOCAL STORAGE. One main thing about WORKING STORAGE in a subroutine is that it maintains the values contained between executions of the subroutine. It is a bit like C language "static". On the other hand, LOCAL STORAGE values are reset to their VALUE clause (or "nothing in particular" if no VALUE clause) each time the subroutine is invoked. To me, some other "big" and "useful" changes are: in line PERFORM - allows more like a DO loop instead of needing to PERFORM a paragraph or section in another part of the program. It has all the options of the historic PERFORM, but is "nicer" if the code to be PERFORM'd is not used anywhere else. Avoids putting in otherwise "useless" paragraphs. Explicit scope termination: Wonderful. Many verbs can now be explicitly terminated instead of requiring a end of sentence period. This is especially wonderful for the IF / THEN / ELSE / END-IF construct. It makes is much easier to nest IF statements and not need a lot of NEXT SENTENCE junk as the ELSE portion to "do nothing" E.g. instead of: IF condition THEN IF cond2 THEN statement ELSE NEXT SENTENCE ELSE statement for ELSE of first condition . You can: IF condition THEN IF cond2 THEN statement You might look around here for some sites / email groups http://www.cobug.com/cobug/docs/forums0008.html#LST On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Bill Ashton <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi guys...I have been asked to do some COBOL coding, and I have not done > some for quite a few years. Is there a COBOL listserv available, and is > there any other website that would have recommended best practices? > > For example, I used to try to code all my working storage under a very few > 01 levels, to keep the storage contiguous. I now see lots of 77 levels in > sample programs. Which is better and why - can someone point me toward a > best practices website? > -- > Thank you and best regards, > *Billy Ashton* > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you? Maranatha! <>< John McKown ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
