What's New in V5R3?

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.