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Status Future consideration
Workspace COBOL Compilers
Created by Guest
Created on Aug 24, 2021

RELATED IDEAS

Enterprise COBOL V6+ - Provide a way to identify source lines discarded by conditional compilation

We have made extensive use of conditional compilation to provide a COBOL development framework.

If the development framework is easy to use, the result is a compilation listing filled with lines of source code commented out by conditional compilation.

To date, nothing makes it possible to distinguish a real comment line, introduced by the developer in his source code, or in the COPYBOOKs of the framework, compared to the source lines commented out by the conditional compilation.

In the end, reading the compilation listing becomes incomprehensible (and it is the compilation listing that is used by our debugging tools).

We want to have a way to identify the source lines discarded by conditional compilation:
- either by having a compilation option which prevents them from appearing in the compilation listing (best solution)
- either by introducing "header" and "trailer" before and after the discarded source lines, for example in the form of "==> IGZxxxx" messages, (which will make the compilation listing even less readable).
- either by producing a table of the source lines discarded by the conditional compilation at the end of the compilation listing.
- either not to number the source lines excluded by the conditional compilation
- either inject (optionally) *CONTROL NOSOURCE / *CONTROL SOURCE control cards before and after the source lines excluded by the conditional compilation


The best solution we would hope to be implemented is the first.
The other solutions would allow us to develop a post processing of the compilation listing (possibly by an exit) to physically remove the lines discarded by the conditional compilation of the compilation listing and make it more readable for the developer (reminder: the compilation listing is used by our debugging tools).

========

A difficulty lies in the fact that the line numbers of the source code are used in the references (LIST, OFFSET ...).

A solution to work around this problem is to do a first compilation in MDECK(NOCOMPILE) mode, to produce a source with the lines commented out by the conditional compilation, then to remove these lines from the source code, and finally to launch a real compilation on the new one streamlined source.

We believe this is how the COBOL compiler should work internally.

Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Oct 14, 2021

    The chosen solution must be compatible with the use of the MDECK(NOCOMPILE) compilation option , i.e. the lines commented out by the conditional compilation must be identifiable (or preferably discarded) in the source written in the SYSMDECK output.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Sep 18, 2021

    This is a valid RFE and is being accepted. It will be updated further once put into plan.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Sep 15, 2021

    We also have trouble to identify those lines. Compilations on different platforms needs sometimes code modifications, so we used conditional compile to allow multiplatform-sourcecode.
    In my opinion there should be a IGY-Message for "some lines were eliminated by ConditionalCompile" and then listed (without line number) the code lines.
    And on next Occurance the same IGY-Message (should be Level 0, not warning, and could be eliminated by message exit).

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Aug 27, 2021

    Applying this to debug lines (with debugging mode) would be helpful as well.

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