On 7/30/2013 9:27 AM, John Gilmore wrote:
John McKown wrote:
<begin extract>
I'm certain that the programmer will want each separate program to
have equal access to the WORKING-STORAGE of the "main" routine. Which
means having all, or most, of the WORKING-STORAGE in a COPY book with
the EXTERNAL attribute on all the 01 and 77 levels.
</end extract>
That is certainly one way, a dubious traditional way, to do things.
If, however, your programmer is up to using recursion then he or she
is up to declaring a COBOL analogue of an HLASM DSECT or a PL/I based
structure and passing a pointer to it to these new entries. This sort
of thing is now eminently possible in Enterprise COBOL.
COBOL is not my favorite statement-level language, but it is now in
its post-CODASYL form a much better language than it once was. The
real question is: Does a COBOL shop wish to use these new and quite
powerful facilities? Or does it want to continue to use circa-1970
technology?
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
Yes, that's a very critical issue to face. Most (not all) COBOL
shops I've seen are reluctant to use many of the new facilities
and still prefer to code in the old style.
In one shop I taught (fairly recently), the directive was to
have all code in uppercase. So, I started out by demonstrating
mixed case usage then switched to all uppercase code. Simple
stuff, but very frustrating, especially when you read about
studies that demonstrate mixed case text is easier to read and
quickly comprehend than all uppercase; mixed case is the way
most people communicate on the internet and the web; and mixed
case is critical when using XML facilities of the language.
What's it gonna' take to change the old mentality?
For experienced COBOL coders, we offer "Enterprise COBOL
Update", a 2 day course that covers all the major (and many
of the minor) language changes from COBOL I through COBOL 4.
http://www.trainersfriend.com/COBOL_Courses/d704descr.htm
--
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
The Trainer's Friend, Inc.
303-355-2752
http://www.trainersfriend.com
* To get a good Return on your Investment, first make an investment!
+ Training your people is an excellent investment
* Try our tool for calculating your Return On Investment
for training dollars at
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