ILE COBOL Language Reference
The value of a parameter passed through the BY CONTENT phrase is evaluated
when the CALL statement runs. This value is assigned to the
corresponding parameter of the called program.
For each ILE COBOL item passed BY CONTENT, a copy of the item is made in
the calling program, and a pointer to this copy passes to the called
program. Changes made to the parameter in the called program do not
affect the data item of the calling program. The number of characters
in each parameter must be equal; however, the data descriptions need not
be the same.
- identifier-2
- Must be defined as a level-01, level-77, or elementary data item in
the File, Working-Storage, Local-Storage or Linkage Sections. It must not be a function-identifier.
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It can be a:
- Data item of any level in the Data Division
- Pointer data item (an item defined implicitly or explicitly as USAGE IS
POINTER)
- Procedure-pointer data item
- DBCS data item
- National data item
- Floating-point data item
- Date-time data item.
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- ADDRESS OF special register
- For information about this special register, see page "ADDRESS OF Special Register".
- ADDRESS OF a data item
- For information about this, see page "ADDRESS OF".
- LENGTH OF special register
- The LENGTH OF special register contains the number of bytes used by a data
item referenced by an identifier. For more information, see LENGTH OF Special Register.
- literal-2
- Can be:
- A nonnumeric literal
- A figurative constant
- A Boolean literal
- A DBCS literal
- National hexadecimal literal.
- file-name-1
- Must appear in an FD entry. It passes a pointer data item.
- OMITTED
- For standard parameters when a parameter is passed BY CONTENT, a pointer
to a copy of the data item is passed to the called program. When
OMITTED is specified, a NULL pointer is passed to the called program.
In this case, the called program will use its default value.
OMITTED can only be specified on calls to programs with a LINKAGE TYPE of
procedure.
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