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Status Not under consideration
Workspace COBOL Compilers
Created by Guest
Created on Nov 25, 2019

RELATED IDEAS

Enterprise Cobol - EXIT PARAGRAPH | SECTION label

The EXIT PARAGRAPH or EXIT SECTION statement goes to the end of the current paragraph or section.

However, in PERFORM structured call programming at different levels, it may be necessary to abort a process by connecting at the end of a paragraph or section of a parent level.
This is now being used to set paragraph or section for "exit" (PERFORM begin THRU end) and use GO TO to connect to the end label.

Providing an instruction of the form "EXIT PARAGRAPH | SECTION label" would avoid the need to declare additional paragraphs or sections only for abandoning processing at a child level, and avoid coding GO TO statements.

An "EXIT PARAGRAPH | SECTION label" statement would be equivalent to a "GO TO" statement after the last sentence of the paragraph or section corresponding to "label".

It remains the developer's responsibility to use this "EXIT PARAGRAPH | SECTION label" statement wisely.

Idea priority Low
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jan 19, 2020

    We are currently developing our Cobol programs using the IBM VisualAge Pacbase product.
    This product uses a pseudo Cobol language which has highly appreciated specificities and which are sources of productivity in the coding phases of programs, (productivity gain estimated at minimum at x5 compared to traditional Cobol coding).
    Among these specificities, the pseudo-Cobol language has instructions allowing the abandonment of a loop or the passage to the next iteration of a loop at all levels of nesting of what could be assimilated to a PARAGRAPH or SECTION Cobol.

    We will have to abandon the IBM VisualAge Pacbase product which is no longer maintained, and we wish to find in Cobol language the same functionality as those we had with the pseudo Pacbase language (called "structured language").

    We invite you to get closer to the PARIS IBM Lab. (FRANCE) for more information on the IBM VisualAge Pacbase product and why it has been a real success in large IT companies in France, but also outside France.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Dec 19, 2019

    Hi,
    I think exactly the opposite and that is the reason why I proposed this development.
    The use of programming structured in paragraph levels called by PERFORM requires either to make the tests more complex (adding condition variables to abandon a loop or a branch), or to code output paragraphs and use GO TO instructions.
    The possibility of making a named EXIT greatly facilitates coding and makes programs more readable and more maintainable.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Dec 17, 2019

    Hi,

    We do not think this is good coding practice and we do not think this will benefit a lot of our clients.

    As a result, we are rejecting this RFE.

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