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Status Future consideration
Workspace COBOL Compilers
Categories z/OS
Created by Guest
Created on Jun 30, 2025

RELATED IDEAS

Enterprise COBOL - Native handling of output streams equivalent to stderr and stdout

HI,

COBOL programs compiled with IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS only support a single output stream associated with the DISPLAY statement.

A priori, running under MVS, this output stream corresponds to STDERR (file descriptor number 2) in other languages ​​supported on z/OS as C/C++, also known as the z/OS Language Environment messages file / MSGFILE runtime option, associated by default with the ddname SYSOUT.
Running under USS would allow choosing between STDERR and STDOUT via the _IGZ_SYSOUT environment variable, but exclusively: one or the other, but not both in the same program run.

It would be useful to have two different streams to produce "information" (STDOUT) and "error" (STDERR) outputs using the DISPLAY statement, without having to implement file management.


I therefore suggest that new environment names be managed by the COBOL compiler and runtime:

  • STDERR, synonymous with SYSOUT, SYSLIST, SYSLST, associated with file descriptor number 2

  • STDOUT, new, associated with file descriptor number 1

  • STDIN, synonymous with SYSIN, SYSIPT, associated with file descriptor number 0


Thanks.

Idea priority Low
  • Admin
    Basil Kanneth
    Sep 29, 2025

    This idea has been triaged and will be accepted. It will be updated further once put into plan.

    Reply
  • Admin
    Basil Kanneth
    Jul 30, 2025

    This idea is being reviewed further.

    Reply

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