Re: COBOL 101

Robert Munday wrote:

How important is it to have a field referred to as "Unique-Field-Name In My-File-Format" rather than just "Unique-Field-Name"? In my program examples, I have the IN replaced by an OF... "Unique-Field-Name Of My-File-Format". As I recall, I had to name some of the formats, but not others, to get my fields to populate... some screen output, some report output.

As far as I have seen, I do not have two identical field names in my program.

Robert:

Technically, given the last comment, it's not important at all. It really isn't meaningful.

What is my best course of action?

That's a little different issue. Some wandering thoughts...

How important it is can vary depending on the size of the procedure, the variability (how often is it changed), the number of group items...

I have a group of procs that have sets of large structures that are used to convert multiple fields from internal binary and/or packed values to external USAGE DISPLAY values. The structures are fairly large, so the easiest method is a MOVE CORR for each structure. The non-unique names are necessarily qualified at points where they're individually referenced, generally at only single points for any individual field.

For those procs, especially relying on MOVE CORR, qualification is simply standard even though there are few structures in each single proc.

For procs with different purposes than those -- process a couple files, have only a few group-items in working storage and various elementary items, calculate values, print a line or update a record -- maybe no qualification is ever needed.

But a proc with a dozen or more interrelated files with many complex group-items in a large working storage, maybe qualification becomes a survival need. Make a modification next year, and qualification as a standard might save a _lot_ of time.

Tom Liotta