stupid cobol question -- MIDRANGE-L

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Or, subject could be:  Stupid Cobol,... question.

Hey all,

I'm doing some contract work in cobol, and before last month, it had
been VERY long since I'd even seen a cobol program, let alone changed or
written one.

As an RPG pgmr, I've always used the rule of thumb that you should avoid
hard coding variable definitions in your programs.  Is there a cobol
working storage keyword equivelent to the *like defn?  

also, what EXACTLY is the difference between RENAMES and REDEFINES
keywords?  Maybe I'm just dense, but the manuals aren't much help.

Thanks much,

Rick Baird
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