Re: Why QLBLSRC

Best answer I received. Thanks for your input.

-----Original Message-----
From: cobol400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:cobol400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Simon Coulter
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 3:22 AM
To: COBOL Programming on the iSeries/AS400
Subject: Re: [COBOL400-L] Why QLBLSRC


On 31/10/2007, at 3:57 PM, Bob wrote:

Besides CBL being taken with an 80 byte field length, probably a
mash up
of ILE and CBL, or possibly it leans Long COBOL.
But probably a type that stuck.

ILE COBOL uses QCBLLESRC by default. QLBLSRC is for OPM programs as
is QCBLSRC although there is no reason they cannot be used for ILE
source. QLBLSRC is for COBOL/400. QCBLSRC is for S/38-compatible COBOL.

The likely reason is:
LB is the prefix assigned to the COBOL development group (like MH for
Message Handler, or SY for Security) for COBOL/400. The prefix is
used in the object naming convention. Note that the CPP for CRTCBLPGM
is QLBCBL and all the objects in the QLBL library related to COBOL
have QLB (or some minor variant) as the prefix.

The prefix for S/38 COBOL is/was CB. Perhaps in the move to COBOL/400
a blanket rename was performed thus changing QCBLSRC (S/38) into
QLBLSRC (AS/400)? Or perhaps they thought all objects in the product
had to use the new prefix?

I suspect what they should have done was rename the S/38 COBOL
compiler library to QCBL38 instead of leaving it as QCBL. This would
have allowed them to keep QCBL for COBOL/400. Perhaps they thought
that because the prefix had changed the library also had to change?

Didn't seem to bother the RPG team though. They used the same prefix
for S/38 RPG and RPG/400 objects but added a suffix of 38 to all
(well most of) the S/38 compatible objects.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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