Summary of changes

This section lists the major changes that have been made to this document Start of changefor Enterprise COBOL Version 6 Release 2 and Version 6 Release 2 with PTFs installedEnd of change. The changes that are described in this information have an associated cross-reference for your convenience. Start of changeThe latest technical changes are marked within >| and |< in the HTML version, or marked by vertical bars (|) in the left margin in the PDF version.End of change

Start of change

Version 6 Release 2 with PTFs installed

New and changed compiler options

  • The following compiler options are new:
    • PI91584: COPYLOC: The new COPYLOC compiler option can be used to add either a PDSE (or PDS) dataset or z/OS® UNIX directory as an additional location to be searched for copy members during the library phase. (COPYLOC)
    • PH05855: INITIAL: The new INITIAL compiler option allows you to get a program that has initial values in data items each time the program is called, without having to add the IS INITIAL clause to the PROGRAM-ID paragraph, and without having to use dynamic CALL and CANCEL statements. (INITIAL)
  • The following compiler options are modified:
    • PI90571: ZONEDATA: The ZONEDATA option is updated to affect the behaviour of MOVE statements, comparisons, and computations for USAGE DISPLAY or PACKED-DECIMAL data items that could contain invalid digits, an invalid sign code, or invalid zone bits. (ZONEDATA)
    • PI91585: RULES: New suboptions OMITODOMIN | NOOMITODOMIN are added to the RULES option to control whether the compiler will issue warning messages for any OCCURS DEPENDING ON clauses that are specified without integer-1 (the minimum number of occurrences). (RULES)
    • PI91586: RULES: New suboptions UNREF | NOUNREFALL | NOUNREFSOURCE are added to the RULES option to control whether the compiler will report unreferenced data items, and to control whether the reporting is done only for data items not declared in a copy member (NOUNREFSOURCE) or all data items (NOUNREFALL). (RULES)
    • PI96135: NUMCHECK(PAC): For packed decimal (COMP-3) data items that have an even number of digits, the unused bits are checked for zeros. (NUMCHECK)
    • PI98480: NUMCHECK(ZON): New suboptions ALPHNUM | NOALPHNUM are added to the NUMCHECK(ZON) option to control whether the compiler will generate code for an implicit numeric class test for zoned decimal data items that are being compared with an alphanumeric data item, alphanumeric literal or alphanumeric figurative constant. (NUMCHECK)
    • PH04369: RULES(NOEVENPACK) will not issue messages for even-digit PACKED-DECIMAL data items whose names start with DFH, DSN, EYU or SQL, that is, data items generated for/by CICS and Db2. (RULES)
    • PH04485: TEST: New suboptions DSNAME | NODSNAME are added to the TEST|NOTEST(SEPARATE) option to control whether the external file name, which is the SYSDEBUG dataset name used during compilation, will or will not be stored in the object program. (TEST)
    • PH08642: NUMCHECK: Redundant checks previously added by the NUMCHECK option have been removed, improving performance, and some checks can be done at compile time. Specifying NUMCHECK may also cause the compiler to produce some messages at compile time instead of at runtime. (NUMCHECK)
    • PH09225: INITCHECK: The INITCHECK option can be specified with OPTIMIZE(0). (INITCHECK)
    • PH11667: NUMCHECK(BIN): NUMCHECK(BIN) will check for binary data items (COMP, COMP-4, and USAGE BINARY) even when TRUNC(BIN) is in effect. (NUMCHECK)

IBM-supplied CICS reserved-word table changes

Statement changes

  • PI95081: A new LOC(24|31) phrase is added to the ALLOCATE statement to control the location of dynamic storage that is acquired, which overrides the influence of the DATA compiler option. (Storage and its addressability)

Intrinsic function enhancements

  • PI97434: Add support for processing national data items with the following intrinsic functions:
    • REVERSE
    • ULENGTH
    • UPOS
    • USUBSTR
    • UWIDTH
    (Intrinsic functions and national data)

    If the updated intrinsic functions (REVERSE, ULENGTH, UPOS, USUBSTR, UWIDTH) in the May compiler PTFs (UI56120, UI56121, UI56122) are used, then the May Runtime PTF UI56043(V2R1)/UI56042(V2R2)/UI55861(V2R3) must also be applied to Language Environment on all systems where these programs are linked or run.

  • PI99703: If the new intrinsic functions (BIT-OF, HEX-OF, E, PI, TRIM) in the July compiler PTFs (UI57342, UI57343, UI57344, UI57345) are used, then the July Runtime PTF UI57304(V2R1)/UI57303(V2R2)/UI57302(V2R3) must also be applied to Language Environment on all systems where these programs are linked or run.
  • PH02183: If the new intrinsic functions (BIT-TO-CHAR, HEX-TO-CHAR, NUMVAL-F, TEST-NUMVAL, TEST-NUMVAL-C, TEST-NUMVAL-F) in the September compiler PTFs (UI58632, UI58633, UI58634) are used, then the September Runtime PTF UI58596(V2R1)/UI58595(V2R2)/UI58603(V2R3) must also be applied to Language Environment on all systems where these programs are linked or run.
End of change
Start of change

Version 6 Release 2

New, changed, and removed compiler options

  • The following compiler options are new:
  • The following compiler options are modified:
    • AFP: The default value is changed to AFP(NOVOLATILE). (AFP)
    • ARCH: A new higher level of ARCH(12) is accepted. ARCH(7) is still the default. (ARCH)
    • MAXPCF: The default value is changed to MAXPCF(100000) to reflect the increased capacity of the V6 compiler. (MAXPCF)
    • NOSTGOPT: In earlier versions, data items can get optimized with OPT(2) even when NOSTGOPT was in effect. NOSTGOPT was changed in this version so that no optimization of storage or data items occurs even with OPT(2). This is especially helpful for WORKING-STORAGE eye-catchers. (STGOPT)
    • SSRANGE: New suboptions MSG and ABD are added to the SSRANGE compiler option to control how the compiler checks reference modification lengths. (SSRANGE)
    • TEST: New suboptions SEPARATE and NOSEPARATE are added to the TEST compiler option to control program object size on disk while retaining debugging capability. In addition, new combinations of suboptions are supported in both the TEST and NOTEST compiler options, including TEST(NODWARF), TEST(SEPARATE), and NOTEST(DWARF,SOURCE). (TEST)
  • The following compiler option is removed:
    • ZONECHECK is deprecated but is tolerated for compatibility, and it is replaced by NUMCHECK(ZON). (ZONECHECK)

New statements

Debugging changes

  • TEST(SEPARATE) supports generating the debug information into side files to control module size while retaining debugging capability. (TEST)

Listing changes

  • Compiler diagnostic messages now appear at the end of the listing, as was the case in COBOL compilers before Enterprise COBOL V5.
  • Addition of MD5 signature to program objects and debug data to allow matching of debug data with executables even if a program is recompiled. (Example: MD5 signature)
  • Three new fields are added at the end of PPA4:
    • Offset of the first user-defined data item in WORKING-STORAGE.
    • Total length of user-defined data items in WORKING-STORAGE.
    • Bit to indicate whether there are EXTERNAL data items.
    (Example: Program prolog areas)

Usability enhancements

  • Improves usability of the compiler in the z/OS UNIX System Services environment with addition of help information for the cob2 compiler invocation command. (cob2 syntax and options)
End of change