I disagree. I believe it is never acceptable for a utility to abend with a S0C4 or S0C1 or S0C7 or S0CB or whatever, merely because you used the control cards not as documented. That's a failure of the utility to detect the problem and handle it gracefully.
Whether in this case a compiler internal error, vs. some explicit error, is ungraceful I don't know. Personally I'd lean on it being a problem that should be fixed. If you just saw this internal error, how would you have any idea what the cause was? -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Peter Relson Sent: Friday, September 12, 2025 11:12 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Would you consider this a compiler bug? It would rarely be considered an APARable defect if something unexpected happened when you did not follow the documented requirements (this is certainly not unique to the COBOL compiler; the same is true for almost any documented interface). Handling the situation "nicer" sometimes is necessary but often would be an "enhancement". I'm fully in favor of such enhancements, but they do need to be prioritized and paid for (which could be at the expense of something else that you might prefer having). Peter Relson ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
