Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

When should we think about using pointers in COBOL? Is there a situation which can not be solved without pointers? I did look at some documentation https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgece ... finpnt.htm but I am not sure if I got the answer yet. Could someone please share his experience if they have used this?

If you want to access z/OS control blocks and their data, you cannot do this without using pointers. There are few circumstances in COBOL for which pointers are absolutely required, but accessing control blocks is one of them.

the link You posted is for AS/400 cobol
while COBOL is mostly platform independent, the part concerning pointer is not

for zOS see an example here
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.w ... wg21392963