The following list describes the enhancements made to ILE COBOL in V5R3:
- Large VALUE clause support
When the *NOSTDTRUNC compiler option is
in effect, data items described with usage BINARY, or COMP-4 that do not have
a picture symbol P in their PICTURE clause can have a value up to the capacity
of the native binary representation.
- CONSTANT data type
A CONSTANT data type is defined by specifying a
level-01 entry containing the CONSTANT clause for a literal. The CONSTANT
data item can then be used in place of the literal.
- XML support
XML PARSE statement provides the interface to a high-speed
XML parser that is part of the COBOL run time. The XML PARSE statement parses
an XML document into its individual pieces and passes each piece, one at a
time, to a user-written processing procedure.
These XML special registers
are used to communicate information between the XML parser and the user-written
processing procedure:
- XML-CODE
- XML-EVENT
- XML-NTEXT
- XML-TEXT
- Alternate Record Key support
The ALTERNATE RECORD KEY clause lets you
define alternate record keys associated with indexed files. These alternate
keys allow you to access the file using a different logical ordering of the
file records.
DBCS data item names (DBCS word support)
- 63 digit support
- The maximum length of packed decimal, zoned decimal, and numeric-edited
items has been extended from 31 to 63 digits.
- The ARITHMETIC parameter on the CRTCBLMOD and CRTBNDCBL commands and on
the PROCESS statement has a new EXTEND63 option.
7 new ANSI Intrinsic functions:
- INTEGER
- REM
- ANNUITY
- INTEGER-PART
- MOD
- FACTORIAL
- RANDOM
New CRTBNDCBL / CRTCBLMOD options:
- *NOCRTARKIDX / *CRTARKIDX Specifies whether or not to create temporary
alternate record key indexes if permanent ones cannot be found.
- *STDINZHEX00 Specifies that data items without a value clause are initialized
with hexadecimal zero.
- *EXTEND63 option for the ARITHMETIC parameter increases the precision
of intermediate results for fixed-point arithmetic up to 63 digits.
- New PROCESS statement options:
- PROCESS statement option NOCOMPRESSDBG/COMPRESSDBG indicates whether listing
view compression should be performed by the compiler when DBGVIEW option *LIST
or *ALL is specified
- NOCRTARKIDX/CRTARKIDX
- STDINZHEX00
- EXTEND63 option for the ARITHMETIC parameter
- Program Status Structure
The program status structure is a predefined
structure that contains error information when the COBOL program receives
an error. The PROGRAM STATUS clause is used to specify the error information
that is received.