Changes in IBM® Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, Version 6 Release 1

New and changed options

  • The following compiler options are new:
    • SUPPRESS
    • VSAMOPENFS
    • ZONECHECK
  • The following compiler options are modified:
    • LANGUAGE
    • SSRANGE

Removed options

The LVLINFO installation option is removed. The build level information is put where LVLINFO used to be, and the SERVICE compiler option can be used for user service level information in place of LVLINFO.

New and changed statements

  • The new ALLOCATE statement obtains dynamic storage, while the new FREE statement releases dynamic storage that was previously obtained with an ALLOCATE statement. Both statements are part of the Start of change2002 COBOL StandardEnd of change.
  • Enhancements are made to the INITIALIZE statement as part of the Start of change2002 COBOL StandardEnd of change:
    • A new FILLER phrase is added so that FILLER data items can be initialized with the INITIALIZE statement.
    • A new VALUE phrase is added so that elementary data items can be initialized to the literal specified in the VALUE clause.
  • The new JSON GENERATE statement converts data to JSON format.

Compiler behavior changes

Start of changeIn Enterprise COBOL V6, the compiler starts using storage above the 2 GB BAR to compile programs, even those that are not large. This means that the z/OS® MEMLIMIT parameter would have to be set to a nonzero value. The z/OS default for MEMLIMIT is 2 GB, but if you compile a program and your z/OS setting for MEMLIMIT is not high enough, you could get this compiler message: IGYCB7145-U Insufficient memory in the compiler to continue compilation. If you encounter this error message, set REGION=0M and MEMLIMIT=3G on the job card and recompile your programs. If it is successful, consider changing the system MEMLIMIT default that was set in IEFUSI, SMFPRMxx, or SMFLIMxx to no less than 2 GB.
Note: The SMFLIMxx PARMLIB member is only available in z/OS V2.2 and later versions.
End of change

Debugging changes

The allocation and management of WORKING-STORAGE SECTION have been changed since Enterprise COBOL V5. This does not affect the execution of the COBOL program. Tools or programs that need to locate the starting address of the WORKING-STORAGE SECTION might be affected.

JCL changes

To specify the language of compiler messages, you must use the LANGUAGE compiler option and also set the Language Environment® runtime option NATLANG at compile time. We recommend using CEEOPTS DD in the compile JCL.