RE: Cobol/Seu and Data Areas

["Jon Paris" <Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The ability for ILE COBOL (not OPM COBOL) to access named data areas has
been supported since V3R7.  The basic syntax is like so:

DISPLAY/ACCEPT Sourcefield UPON/FROM  DataAreaSpecialName FOR DataAreaNAme
IN LibraryName AT StartPosition WITH LOCK ON EXCEPTION StuffToDo  NOT ON
EXCEPTION OtherStuffToDo END-DISPLAY.

Where DataAreaSpecialName is associated with the environment name DATA-AREA
in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph.  So your example should be coded like so and
will work just fine.

I deleted the original message so I can't check, but did your code include
the "Configuration Section" entry?  There appears to be a bug in the
compiler such that it does not diagnose this as missing, but will
erroneously flag other things (in particular SPECIAL-NAMES) as being
invalid.  Perhaps this caused your problem?

Here's roughly what your code should look like.

       Identification Division.
       Program-Id.  TESTPROG.
       Configuration Section.
       Special-Names.  DATA-AREA is Trans-Count.

       Data Division.
       Working-Storage Section.

       77 WS-TRANS-COUNT     Pic S9(13) Comp.
      * Other WS stuff here
       Procedure Division.
       Main.
           Accept WS-TRANS-COUNT from Trans-Count
                  for "DRDACNT" library WS-WORK-LIB.

           Display WS-TRANS-COUNT upon TransCount
                  for "DRDACNT" library WS-WORK-LIB.

Jon Paris
Partner400