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COBOL Important Notes-COBOL basic

Character Definition Even before the advent of hex literals, many instances of hex values typed as unprintable characters in old programs co...

Character Definition
Even before the advent of hex literals, many instances of hex values typed as unprintable characters in old programs could have been avoided by the use of COBOL’s symbolic characters facility which assigns program-defined names to one-byte bit patterns.  The bit pattern is designated by the ordinal number of the desired character in either EBCDIC or another character set, if specified.  A character’s ordinal number equals its numeric bit value plus one.  Therefore, the ordinal character numbers of an 8-bit character set run from 1 to 256.
In the example below, the words: CHARACTERS and IS are optional.
       ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
       CONFIGURATION SECTION.
       SPECIAL-NAMES.
           SYMBOLIC CHARACTERS LOW-VAL IS 1
                               HEX-15  IS 22
                               HI-VAL  IS 256.


       PROCEDURE DIVISION.

           MOVE HEX-15  TO WS-LINE-BREAK.

Class Tests
COBOL allows the use of user-defined class conditions, in addition to the predefined class conditions such as NUMERIC and ALPHABETIC.
In the example below, a user-defined class name is used to test for the exclusive presence of upper-case aplha, numbers, low-value, or blank.
       ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
       CONFIGURATION SECTION.
       SPECIAL-NAMES.
           CLASS NAMECHAR IS
             'A' THRU 'Z', X'40', '-', '_'.


       PROCEDURE DIVISION.

           EVALUATE TRUE
             WHEN WS-TEST-LINE IS NAMECHAR
                SET NAME-LINE    TO TRUE
             WHEN WS-TEST-LINE IS NUMERIC
                SET NUMBER-LINE  TO TRUE
             WHEN OTHER
                SET ERROR-LINE   TO TRUE
           END-EVALUATE.

Masking External Storage
Use reference modification to mask a length of external storage that is longer than the length of the Linkage Section field defined to access it.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       01  WS-BYTES-100                PIC  X(100).

       LINKAGE SECTION.
       01  LINK-HOLD-AREA              PIC  X(1).

       PROCEDURE DIVISION  USING LINK-HOLD-AREA.
           MOVE WS-BYTES-100
             TO LINK-HOLD-AREA(1:LENGTH OF WS-BYTES-100).

Address Manipulation
The following demonstrates methods of address manipulation.  Note that the ADDRESS OFspecial register is a USAGE POINTER item and therefore cannot be used in a MOVEstatement.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       01  FILLER.
           05  WS-PTR                  USAGE IS POINTER.
           05  WS-ADDR-X  REDEFINES  WS-PTR.
                10  WS-ADDR            PIC S9(8) COMP.

           05  WS-SAVE-POINTER         USAGE IS POINTER.
           05  WS-SAVE-FULLWORD        PIC S9(8) COMP.
           05  WS-SAVE-CHAR-4          PIC  X(4).

       01  WS-DATA-AREA-1              PIC  X(100).
       01  WS-DATA-AREA-2              PIC  X(200).

       LINKAGE SECTION.
       01  LINK-CALL-AREA.
           05  LINK-DATA-ADDR          PIC S9(8) COMP.

       01  LINK-DATA-AREA              PIC  X(100).

       PROCEDURE DIVISION  USING LINK-CALL-AREA
                                 LINK-DATA-AREA.

           MOVE LINK-DATA-ADDR  TO WS-ADDR.
           SET ADDRESS OF LINK-DATA-AREA  TO WS-PTR.

           SET WS-PTR  TO ADDRESS OF WS-DATA-AREA-1.
           SET ADDRESS OF LINK-DATA-AREA  TO WS-PTR.

           SET WS-SAVE-POINTER  TO WS-PTR.
           MOVE WS-ADDR    TO WS-SAVE-FULLWORD.
           MOVE WS-ADDR-X  TO WS-SAVE-CHAR-4.

           SET ADDRESS OF LINK-DATA-AREA
            TO ADDRESS OF WS-DATA-AREA-2.

      *********** THIS WILL NOT COMPILE
      ***  MOVE ADDRESS OF WS-DATA-AREA-2  WS-ADDR.
      ***********
           SET ADDRESS OF LINK-DATA-AREA  TO WS-PTR.

Passing an Address
The following demonstrates how to access a variable-length record whose address was passed by the caller.  This method, in which the data is moved to a layout in Working Storage, will map the fixed-length area which follows the variable-length area to the correct displacement.  Coding the record layout in the Linkage Section will not.  Note that an equals sign rather than the keyword, IS, is used to test a pointer for NULL.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       01  FILLER.
           05  LEN                     PIC S9(4)  COMP.

       01  VARLEN-RECORD.
           05  VLR-FIXED-AREA-1.
                10  FILLER             PIC  X(98).
                10  VLR-ITEM-CNT       PIC S9(4)  COMP.
           05  VLR-VAR-AREA.
                10  VLR-VAR-ITEM  OCCURS 1 TO 10 TIMES
                                     DEPENDING ON VLR-ITEM-CNT.
                    15  VLR-VAR-FLD-1  PIC  X(5).
                    15  VLR-VAR-FLD-2  PIC  X(10).
           05  VLR-FIXED-AREA-2        PIC  X(25).

       LINKAGE SECTION.
       01  LINK-CALL-AREA.
           05  LINK-VAR-SUB            PIC S9(4)  COMP.
           05  LINK-RECORD-PTR         USAGE IS POINTER.

       01  LINK-RECORD-AREA            PIC  X(1).

       PROCEDURE DIVISION  USING LINK-CALL-AREA
                                 LINK-RECORD-AREA.

           COMPUTE LEN =  (LENGTH OF VLR-FIXED-AREA-1)
                        + (LENGTH OF VLR-FIXED-AREA-2)
                        +  LINK-VAR-SUB
                             * (LENGTH OF VLR-VAR-ITEM (1)).

           MOVE LINK-VAR-SUB  TO VLR-ITEM-CNT.

           IF  LINK-RECORD-PTR NOT = NULL
                SET ADDRESS OF LINK-RECORD-AREA  TO LINK-RECORD-PTR
                MOVE LINK-RECORD-AREA(1:LEN)  TO VARLEN-RECORD
           END-IF.

Compact Key Break Logic
The following demonstrates very brief logic for a nested key breaking routine that performs each break level paragraph only once for a key sorted by Region, Section, Department, and Group.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       01  FILE-KEY.
           05  FK-THRU-DEPT.
               10  FK-THRU-SECTION.
                   15  FK-REGION       PIC  X(3).
                   15  FK-SECTION      PIC  X(5).
               10  FK-DEPT             PIC  X(6).
           05  FK-GROUP                PIC  X(2).
       01  SAVE-KEY.
           05  SV-THRU-DEPT.
               10  SV-THRU-SECTION.
                   15  SV-REGION       PIC  X(3).
                   15  SV-SECTION      PIC  X(5).
               10  SV-DEPT             PIC  X(6).
           05  SV-GROUP                PIC  X(2).
       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
           IF  FILE-KEY NOT = SAVE-KEY
                PERFORM GROUP-BREAK
                IF  FK-THRU-DEPT NOT = SV-THRU-DEPT
                     PERFORM DEPT-BREAK
                     IF  FK-THRU-SECTION NOT = SV-THRU-SECTION
                          PERFORM SECTION-BREAK
                          IF  FK-REGION NOT = SV-REGION
                               PERFORM REGION-BREAK.

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