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Status Not under consideration
Workspace COBOL Compilers
Created by Guest
Created on Nov 18, 2019

RELATED IDEAS

Enterprise Cobol - Generate "no-op" binary for EXIT statement when TEST option is active

See this idea on ideas.ibm.com

When the EXIT statement is used in a PARAGRAPH, and that PARAGRAPH is not the end of scope of a PERFORM (THRU), the compiler does not generate any binary code.

This complicates the debug by not allowing to set a breakpoint on the EXIT statement concerned:
- the breakpoint is assigned to the first binary instruction following the EXIT statement, usually in another PARAGRAPH
- source lines that share the same memory address (OFFSET) are all affected by the breakpoint (usually PARAGRAPH / EXIT sequences).

We suggest that a "no-operation" binary instruction be generated on these EXIT statements when the program is compiled with the TEST option activated (in all forms of the TEST option), even when OPTIMIZE option is also active.

This would assign a specific memory address to each PARAGRAPH / EXIT construct so that the breakpoint is clearly assigned to and only to the relevant EXIT statement.

Same remark for CONTINUE statements when they are the only statements in a PARAGRAPH.

Idea priority Low
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Apr 29, 2020

    We have re-examined the issue mentioned in this RFE and it can be resolved by stopping 1 line before the "exit" statement.

    Introducing extra no-ops results in a performance hit. As a result, this RFE is being rejected.

    Thanks.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Apr 24, 2020

    Thank you for your recent response. We are reviewing it and will update shortly.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Dec 19, 2019

    Hi,
    We want this functionality to be available at all levels of optimization.
    We need to debug / trace programs that are delivered in production and compiled with an optimization level greater than zero, (tested in development environment).
    We accept that this functionality is conditional on the use of the TEST option.
    Note that for other reasons, we also compile with the TEST(NOEJPD) and OPTIMIZE(1) options to remove certain debugging problems on programs delivered in production, (TEST(NOEJPD) does not degrade performance too much, while facilitating diagnostics).

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Dec 17, 2019

    Hi,

    Thank you for submitting this RFE.

    May we know if it would be ok if we did this only at OPT(0) ?

    Regards,
    IBM

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Nov 21, 2019

    @fswarbrick
    Our Cobol programs are generated by IBM VisualAge Pacbase (deprecated :-( ) and we don't control how code is generated.
    The generated code is full of "PARAGRAPH-NAME. EXIT." and "GO TO PARAGRAPH-NAME." (don't generate PERFORM even if code is "structured").

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Nov 19, 2019

    This seems a fine requirement. But have you tried using EXIT PARAGRAPH or EXIT SECTION instead of just EXIT? I believe this does what you are looking for.

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