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On 01/10/2009, at 12:08 PM, MichaelQuigley@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
What's so different about the ILE architecture of COBOL vs RPG? RPG
does
allow you to code subprocedures like function which is very cool.
However,
you can still perform the same function by using 'CALL PROCEDURE'. My
recollection is that the structure of the program objects is the same.
I've written several programs to take advantage of this when I want to
hide internal procedures within a service program.
What you describe is syntactic sugar. Although I prefer RPG support
for function calls that's not my complaint.
Try to create a collection of related functions in a single COBOL
source member. For example, a set of string handling functions. In RPG
or C that's easy: one source member containing a bunch of procedures
(centre, leftAlign, rightAlign, to Upper, toLower, etc,). For RPG
specify EXPORT on the procedure definition. In COBOL you need to
create each procedure in a separate source member--like ILE RPG in its
first incarnation. Although you can have nested programs (invoked via
call procedure) you can't make them visible outside the containing
module. You can't even call them from another module in the same *PGM
or *SRVPGM.
Nested programs are effectively nothing more than a fancy sub-routine:
parameters and locally scoped variables (which are good things) but
that's it. Not a patch on the support offered by RPG and C.
ILE COBOL can call a "proper" procedure but it can't create them.
Although you can achieve the same effect with COBOL it's much less
work in other languages and seems a lot cleaner.
There are a bunch of other "peculiarities" with COBOL procedure
support. For example, if you call a given procedure from more than one
place in your code and you specify RETURNING on one call you must
specify RETURNING on all calls to that procedure even if you don't
care about the return value. I guess this is a "poor man's"
prototyping attempt.
Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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