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Hi, since we have not received any feedback, this RFE is being cancelled. Feel free to open a new one if you are able to answer the previous questions. Thanks.
May we know if you got a chance to review our April 14th, 2020 update?
We shall keep this RFE open till June 17th, 2020 after which we shall close it if no response by then. Thanks.
May I know if you got a chance to review our previous update?
Hi,
We would still like to know what business problem/usage scenario you are trying to solve? ie what would the user do if we were to provide the entry points?
Thanks.
We accept any solution allowing us to find the real address of the entry point of a program loaded in memory, even if to adapt our code for that.
To date, we are looking for the entry point of the main program in a loadmodule. We would also like to be able to obtain the list of modules (CSEST) composing a loadmodule (main program and subroutines) and the addresses of the entry points of each module (CSECT).
"SET function/procedure-pointer TO ENTRY entry-point" was actually meant for internal COBOL usage only. Our docs need to be updated for that.
However, may we know if you would be willing to change your program if we externalized such an intrinsic function to find the entry point?
We want to develop introspection tools for our Cobol programs, such as recovering the "Signature Information Bytes" structure. This requires to navigate in different structures (PPA1, PPA2 ...) from the actual entry point of the program concerned.
Some system routines or LE routines also need to provide the actual entry point of a program, such as some functions of the IGZXAPI routine.
Regardless of these needs, if the "SET function/procedure-pointer TO ENTRY entry-point" statement indicates that it returns the address of an entry point in a program, it must return that address, and not return the address of another routine to call this entry point.
If the current situation answers a problem to handle the call to an external entry point, then this problem must be handled at the "CALL" statement and not at the "SET" statement.
As part of our investigation, we would like to know what sort of business problem are you trying to resolve with this RFE? Thanks.
This RFE is still under consideration
The code generated by the instruction "SET / TO ENTRY" is not managed by the same routine according to the version of the compiler Cobol :
- Enterprise Cobol V4 uses the IGZCPPL routine
- Enterprise Cobol V6 uses the IGZXPPL routine
We need an equivalent to the LOAD assembler macro (SVC 8) that returns the true entry point of a program.