RE: [open-cobol-list] mvs cobol namespace

[William M. Klein]

OK, what am I missing?

Why not do *NO* conversion for a 

   Call "literal"

statement and raise an "ON EXCEPTION" if the subprogram isn't "found" when
you use the name exactly AS entered in the program?

Yes it is true that different compilers in different operating systems *do*
some conversion, but why CONTINUE this "confusion" when you aren't dealing
with those environments.

FYI,  the ISO 2002 Standard introduces an "IS EXTERNAL" phrase to allow one
to specify a "known to the OS" name.  If programmers really WANT to specify
an "odd" name, then that is what they should be using.

Micro Focus and CA-Realia are workstation "tools" intended to allow
mainframe programmers to DEVELOP on the Workstation, but run production on
an IBM mainframe.  Therefore, they *must* provide mainframe OS "emulation"
but I don't see that being the target of Open-COBOL.

Therefore, my STRONG recommendation is do *NO( conversion for CALL "literal"
statements (or COPY "literal" statements).  USE what the programmer enters.
If they want something different, then they should change their source code.

P.S.  For example, Micro Focus supports 

    Call X"hex-literal"

statements.  If you do "conversions" for those, you will have REAL problems.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden On 
> Behalf Of Keisuke Nishida
> Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 11:56 PM
> To: William M. Klein
> Cc: 'David Korn'; address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [open-cobol-list] mvs cobol namespace
> 
> At Wed, 4 Feb 2004 17:48:26 -0600,
> William M. Klein wrote:
> > 
> > the characters
> >    @ # $
> > may be used in program names.  However, this is because  
> these (called
> > "national characters" in IBM-ese) are VALID in "file names" 
> (and therefore
> > load module names).
> 
> Well, these characters may be used as file names on Linux as well,
> but some of these are not valid in C.  So, maybe we should encode
> them in the C level as follows?
> 
>   "address@hidden"  ->  "A$40B"
>   "A#B"  ->  "A$23B"
>   "A$B"  ->  "A$24B"
>   "A-B"  ->  "A$2DB"
>   "A_B"      no change
> 
> Also, program names that begins with digits are not valid in C.
> We need to encode them as well:
> 
>   "12A"  ->  $312A
> 
> Keisuke
> 
> 
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