Option to prevent inadvertent use of LINKAGE-SECTION data items prior to establishing addressability

In a COBOL program, the LINKAGE SECTION is used to describe data structures that are made available to this program from another program or method.  Addressability to these data structures are established in a variety of ways, such as via references in the USING phrase of the PROCEDURE DIVISION header.

If a LINKAGE SECTION data item is used by a COBOL program before the correct addressability to the intended data structure is established, each LINKAGE SECTION 01-level data data item is actually mapped to address zero which is the IHAPSA (Prefixed Save Area) control block owned by the z/OS operating system.

Especially with data structures that are not passed to a COBOL program by the USING phrase of the PROCEDURE DIVISION header, it is easy to inadvertently reference a LINKAGE SECTION data item before addressability to the intended data structure has been established.  While "write" references will fail, a "read" reference to such a data item will result in data from the IHAPSA control block being returned to the COBOL statement.  Such COBOL coding errors can be quite subtle and hard for developers to find and fix.

Similar to the COBOL SSRANGE compiler option that generates code that checks for out-of-range storage references, the suggestion is that there be a new COBOL compiler option that generates code to disallow (fail/abend) any reference to a LINKAGE SECTION data item prior to addressability being established.  If a COBOL program intends to reference the z/OS IHAPSA control block, that program should do so by overtly setting a zero address POINTER value to that LINKAGE SECTION data item and not using this default mapping behavior of an uninitialized LINKAGE SECTION data item.