Re: ILE COBOL - What happend to '*NOSTDERR'??

Yeah - that means I can't just change the type of my old 'CBL'-programs( I
have a couple of hundreds of them....) to 'CBLLE'.  I have tried, and the
compilation works well, but some of the programs run into file error (file
status 9x).  Do you have any idea of how to get around it with a minimum of
coding in the programs?




Geir Kildal, Entra Data as, Norway.




                                                                                
                       
                    Jon.Paris@hal.it                                            
                       
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                                               Subject:     ILE COBOL - What 
happend to '*NOSTDERR'??  
                                                                                
                       
                    09.06.00 22:10                                              
                       
                    Please respond to                                           
                       
                    MIDRANGE-L                                                  
                       
                                                                                
                       
                                                                                
                       






 >> What is the equivalent to this when you compile programs of type CBLLE?

There is no equivalent.  To understand why you have to understand why
*NOSTDERR
was there in the first place.

Some time during the life of COBOL/400 (can't recall exactly when) a number
of
customers reported major inconsistencies in COBOL error handling
particularly in
situation where one file had a file status defined but another did not.  On
investigation it was found that these inconsistencies could not be resolved
(or
even adequately documented) since the combination of circumstances that
caused
them were next to impossible to determine. The only way to fix them was to
introduce a completely new method of consistently handling COBOL's
hierarchy or
error handling.  The result was known as Standard Error Handling.  Since
this
would cause existing programs to change behaviour, it was decided that an
option
had to be created that would allow existing programs to compile and to
operate
as they had.  That option was *NOSTDERR.

OK - so now comes the new ILE compiler.  One of the design points was that
as
far as possible the new one should be fully compatible with the old.  If it
could not be made compatible either the option had to be dropped or the
compiler
had to reject the code as invalid.  The code that caused the original
problems
was completely legal COBOL syntax so the "invalid" option was out.  Nor
could
the compiler behave as the old one had done since a) the conditions under
which
the old behaviour was generated were as close to unpredictable as you can
get
and b) the new compiler was based on a completely different internal
architecture so that even if the conditions had been readily predictable,
duplication of the results would have been very iffy.  So, reluctantly the
decision was made to drop the option.

You may not like the answer, but I hope you'll understand why things
happened
the way they did.


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