IBM PL/I Refresh 2.1.8 - 01/2002

• Enhancements
• Compatibility Improvements
• Fixes

Refresh 2.1.8 Enhancements/Changes

The following enhancements and changes have been added:

• Under the RULES option, the default has been changed from LAXCTL to NOLAXCTL.

  This will cause vastly better code to be generated for most programs, but it may cause some programs to fail to compile unless RULES(LAXCTL) is explicitly specified.

• All the compiler changes made for Enterprise PL/I have been incorporated into the Intel compiler (except, of course, for those items that were already available).

• Except under MVS batch, the right margin may now be up to 200.

• An ordinal type may now be specified as the target of a cast.

• In casts of a FIXED DEC(p,q), q may now be non-zero as long as p >= q and q >= 0. A FIXED DEC type may also now be specified as the target of a cast.

• CS and CDS are now supported built-in functions.

  These implement the 390 "compare-and-swap" and "compare-double-and-swap" instructions. Further documentation is available in the Language Reference Manual.

• UPPERCASE/LOWERCASE are now supported built-in functions. Further documentation is available in the Language Reference Manual.

• SAX-style XML parsing via the PLISAXA and PLISAXB built-in subroutines is now supported. Further documentation is available in the Language Reference Manual.

• The CMPAT option is now supported.

  CMPAT(LE) is the default and generates the same descriptors as in earlier Intel releases.

  CMPAT(V1) and CMPAT(V2) generate the same descriptors as do the old 390 PL/I compilers.

• The REDUCE option has been added.

  The REDUCE option specifies that the compiler is permitted to reduce an assignment of a null string to a structure into a simple copy operation - even if that means padding bytes might be overwritten.

  The NOREDUCE option specifies that the compiler must decompose an assignment of a null string to a structure into a series of assignments of the null string to the base members of the structure.

  The REDUCE option will cause less executable code to be generated for an assignment of a null string to a structure, and that will usually mean your code will run much faster. However, under the REDUCE option, any assignment of a null string to a structure that is reduced to a simple copy will also cause any padding bytes in that structure to be filled with '00'x.

  For instance, in the following structure, there is one byte of padding between field11 and field12. Under the NOREDUCE option, the assignment struc = ''; will cause four assignments to be generated, but the padding byte will be unchanged. However, under the REDUCE option, the assigment would be reduced to one simple copy, but the padding byte will be set to a '00'x.

  dcl 1 struc, 5 field1 bin fixed(31), 5 field11 dec fixed(13) 5 field12 bin fixed(15), 5 field13 char(2);

• The PL/X ANSWER statement is now supported in the macro facility. Further documentation is available in the Language Reference Manual.

• Variables declared at package scope may now be viewed/altered with the debugger.

• POINTERs may now be specified in PUT LIST and PUT EDIT statements (and the item to be outputted will be the 8-character hex value.

• More duplicate values in WHEN clauses will be flagged.

• Many, many performance enhancements were made.

• LAXPUNC/NOLAXPUNC is now supported as a suboption of the RULES option.

  Specifying NOLAXPUNC causes the compiler to flag with an E-level message any place where it assumes punctuation that is missing.

  For instance, given the statement "I = (1 * (2);", the compiler assumes that a closing right parenthesis was meant before the semicolon. Under RULES(NOLAXPUNC), this statement would be flagged with an E-level message; otherwise it would be flagged with a W-level message.

• The BLANK option has been added.

  The BLANK option specifies up to ten alternate symbols for the blank character. This would allow, for instance, your source to contain tab characters.

• The MAXSTMT option has been added.

  Under the MAXSTMT option, optimization will be turned off for any block that has more than the specified number of statements. Use the MAXSTMT option - with a reasonable limit to the number of statements - if you want the compiler to optimize the code generated for a program and are willing for the compiler to optimize only the reasonably sized blocks in that program.

• MVS Projects in WorkFrame now have Connect and Disconnect buttons.

• Cut and Paste can now be performed from within the WorkFrame Monitor window.

• The VisualAge PL/I Online Information Center can now be started from the Start-> menu.

• VisualAge PL/I Manuals in PDF format are now available from the VisualAge PL/I Online Information Center.

Refresh 2.1.8 Compatibility Improvements

The following changes have been made to increase compatibility with the old host compiler:

• Some errors that the new compiler flagged, but which were not flagged by the old 390 compilers are now no longer flagged by default.

  In particular, the following errors are flagged only if RULES(NOLAXLINK) has been specified:

  • declaring a variable as BUILTIN when it is not the name of a built-in function
  • having no RETURN( ... ) statement inside a PROC with the RETURNS option
  • having a RETURN( ... ) statement inside a PROC without the RETURNS option
  • assigning/comparing ENTRYs that do not match

  Note that these are all still errors, and use of RULES(NOLAXLINK) is encouraged. Perhaps only the weakest link will use RULES(LAXLINK).

• A few other smaller message changes have been made to make the severity of messages issued more resemble that produced by the old 390 compilers.

• The compiler will now detect some possible use of uninitialized automatic variables.

• iSUB support has been added for arrays of scalars.

• An AUTOMATIC variable that has an INITIAL CALL attribute will will be retained even if otherwise unused (in case the call to the function must be executed)

Refresh 2.1.8 Fixes

The following compiler/library and VisualAge PL/I component problems have been fixed since the last fixpak:

• The latest FixPak for DB2 V7 must be applied for PL/I programs with imbedded EXEC SQL statements to compile correctly. DB2 APAR IY16784 corrects this problem. Information on the DB2 FixPaks and instructions to download them can be found here.

• The UNDEFINEDFILE condition was being raised for stream output files with a recordsize of 32700. This has now been corrected. It will be documented in the Programming Guide that the maximum line size for variable-length files is 32751; for fixed-length or u-length files, the value is 32759. (IC32578)

• Exception occurred in the debugger during event dispatching. (IC29743)

• File attributes in the program are being overrideen by SET DD information. This should not be the case. (IC30017)

• The SIZE condition was erroneously raised by the library for some E formats when the value to be formatted was equal to zero.

• Some picture to character conversions were being done via a library call, but they never should be.

• Some conversions of FLOAT and FIXED BIN(63) might fail when the SQL preprocessor was used.

• "%replace ... by '1'b" produced an internal compiler error.

• Incorrect code was generated for assignment of '' to structures containing pointers or other non-computational fields.

• Under ebcdic, the CHARGRAPHIC built-in function was padding with '20'X when it should have been padding with '40'X

• If a GENERIC reference with no argument list was used as a boolean, the compiler would report an internal error

• If an INCLUDE statement had specified more than one file with the format "
  ( )", then all files after the first with this format were ignored.

  There was an error in converting picture strings of the form 99V99S to fixed decimal (and both the V and the trailing S had to be present for the error to occur.

  If an array expression on a call required a temporary array to be built, incorrect code was generated if the arrays involved were members of structures and had inherited their dimensions from their parents.

  The INCAFTER option did not work correctly in conjunction with pp(macro).

  Contextual help using the F1 button now works from within LPEX.

  Scroll Buttons are now provided for the LPEX Toolbar so the tool icons which go beyond the edge of the LPEX Window can be accessed. This feature is enabled by default. Please look in the \macros\ScrollToolBar.lx file for instructions on how to disable this feature.

  The IBM.SYSLIB environment variable is now set for WorkFrame projects.

  The Login window in FFS now has a CANCEL button.

  JavaDclGen now works with the more recent Java Development Kits.

  Additional information on VisualAge PL/I Component updates, prerequisites, and ` known problems and limitations can be found in the main VisualAge PL/I Readme file.