Re: COBOL400-L Digest, Vol 2, Issue 33

Michael, Jon and Geir

Thanks for the tips.  beats the hell out of RTFM....  I really mean to tell
you, that cobol manual is about the worst written thing I've ever come
upon.  If you dig, and jump around a bunch, then it's not too bad, but
what's wors is that nearly all of the examples use internally described
file descriptions.

so much for modernization...  i'd really rather just rewrite it in rpg and
be done.

:)

thanks again,
Rick

------original message-----------
subject: RE: [COBOL400-L] 'with duplicates' clause.

 >> We've done a lot of similar work.  We've gone to using PROCESS
*NOSTDERR
which according to the manual, "indicates that the error handling method of
Version 1, Releases 1 and 2, is used."  This seems to have worked well for
us.

That's a good point Michael.  I worked on that so many years ago that I had
completely forgotten about it.

Rick - this is certainly the safest option for you.  Michael's note has
reminded me that the there are bigger problems waiting to bite you in the
rear end if you simply code the file status.  I don't want to rely on my
memory (since it is obviously not functioning too well!)

Please do yourself a favor and read the S38 compatibility section in the
manual and also make _sure_ you read the bits related to *NOSTDERR !!!  The
old S38 compiler (and hence the early COBOL/400) was waaayyyyy too lapse in
enforcing certain ANSI standards and also very inconsistent in its error
handling.  *STDERR fixed that but at the expense of backward compatibility.
If you simply add the file status thing you will get past your dup key
problem but possibly at the expense of far nastier things - like unreported
errors!!!!

Jon Paris
Partner400
www.Partner400.com