Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Ask the people who installed COBOL at your site. It can be, it is site-dependant. Many sites prefer it as the defualt, either through installation or by the default compile options provided through the panels to compile programs. However, there are three arguments against it, for me: it encourages l...

COBOL puts a heavy emphasis on the coder getting it right. If you don't check that you only access within the bounds of your table, then it is not likely that your program is a very robust one. As Robert has pointed out, these days there is SSRANGE, (partial) saviour of many a lazy coder. Another ar...

It is an easy thing to experiment with once you have access to a system. Compile a program without PROGRAM-ID and post the compiler diagnostics you get. For fun, also write a program which uses CALL identifier (rather than CALL literal). Experiment with setting identifier to things which they are no...

You can't directly DISPLAY the values associate with 88's (for the reasons Robert has gone into) but you can see them. In your source. In the compile listing. In the loadmodule on the library, as part of the module in a dump, etc. Why would you need more than that?

The LRECL is just a piece of commentary. It is the maximum length of a logical record in a dataset. If you want to "change" that, there is absolutely and utterly, utterly, no problem in doing so. Whether your data can still be read, depends on the data and what you are trying to read it wi...

Yes. However, without some clue as to what you want to do, it is difficult to say anything beyond that. Once we know what you want, the answer may become No, or may remain Yes, but with additional details.

And there's Libre Office.....

COBOL has a SORT verb (and a MERGE). It is up to the implementer (IBM in this case) as to how this is implemented. I don't know if it has been always, but it seems like forever that IBM has implemented it by using the installed SORT product, which makes a lot of sense. I suspect all COBOL implementa...

Go into the Help and find out about Picture strings.

If using dynamic CALL, for the first CALL for a given module, that module is loaded into memory. CANCEL for that same program name will remove it from memory.

It is not very likely you will need to use it.

Size for USAGE COMP depends on your PICture. If you have PIC 9(4) then it is two bytes, a half-word. What you would see, is the binary value which gives 1234, preceded by zeros if necessary. COMP-1/COMP-2 are floating-point. They are fixed size and cannot have a PICture. COMP-3 size again depends on...

Look at CONVERT in your documentation, VTOF, FTOV

OK, I'm going with enrico's last now. The Lady has walked off with 1000 (800 + 200). The Shopkeeper thinks he has turned 200 of stock into cash. The Neighbour thinks he is flat. The Neighbour notices the fake, so is 1000 down. The Neighbour goes to the Shopkeeper to get his 1000 back. Neighbour is f...

As long as you have your dynamically CALLed programs in a JOBLIB/STEPLIB available to your step, no further changes should be required. Do you have a specific problem?

Pandora, Forget the 1000 note. It is not worth 1000. It is worth zero. Lady got 200 (goods) plus 800 cash. Shopkeeper 1000 down. To give the lady 1000 (including the goods) the Shopkeeper took 1000 from his neighbour. The neighbour realised, and recovered the 1000 from the shopkeeper. Lady got 1000 ...

You have the PSW, you have the registers, you have the dump. Everything you need to get started. Application program? System program? Vendor program?

Correct, for a new member the DISP is not NEW, because the dataset already exists, it is simply new content in an existing dataset.

The lady has taken (as in stolen) 200 in goods, 800 in cash, "paying" with the fake note. The first shopkeeper has taken 1000 from the second shopkeeper, "paying" a second time with the fake note. The second shopkeeper has recovered his 1000. The first shopkeeper is 2000 down. Th...

OK, clearing browser cache did it (Firefox). I can now seem thumbs. I can now thank and un-thank at will.

Inverted triangle with exclamation mark, quote button, cool red hat... oh, that's you Anuj. No thumb.