I know most readers of this group are systems programmers, but for those of us who are interested...
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/6.5.0?topic=whats-new-in-enterprise-cobol-zos-65 Interesting (to me) enhancements are: * Support for user defined types (UDT). This includes TYPEDEF to define a type and TYPE to create a data item of that previously defined type. * High-Low qualification support. This allows one to specify, for example MY-GROUP::MY-FIELD instead of MY-FIELD OF MY-GROUP. This is useful when using user defined types where you have more than one data item of the same type, and that data item is a group data item. If you want to refer to a field within one of those groups it must be qualified (since the name of the field is implicitly defined in multiple places. The new method is, in my mind, much easier to read and understand. * VSAMDB support. We don't use VSAMDB (though it looks interesting) because, if I am understanding correctly, it requires VSAM RLS (record level sharing), which we are not using. But this seems like a good enhancement for those who can take advantage of it. * OMITTED class test and OPTIONAL parameters changes. This fulfils a request I made! Prior to this, Enterprise COBOL supported the OMITTED pseudo-parameter in place of a real parameter, as long as it is a "reference" parameter. In the activated program one determined that the parameter was "omitted" by to checking the address of the parameter for a value of NULL. This was not part of the official COBOL standard. With this new feature, which is part of the COBOL ISO standard, the activated (called) program would specify the parameter as being OPTIONAL, and then use the new "IS [NOT] OMITTED" class test (instead of checking the address for NULL). It also allows for implicitly omitted trailing parameters (where the "trailing" parameters are actually omitted, even when invoked without the OMITTED keyword). Frank ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
