Re: COBOL

From: Chuck Stevens (charles.stevens_at_unisys.com)
Date: 12/24/04 

Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 16:14:55 -0800

On the MCP side, you'd do something like "SELECT BLIVET ASSIGN TO READER" in
the program.

In the WFL job running the program you ccan do something like
    "RUN <object-program-name>; FILE BLIVET (KIND=DISK)".
You can use the ancient VALUE OF in the FD of the program like
    "VALUE OF KIND IS VALUE (DISK)".
In the Procedure Division, you can do
    "CHANGE ATTRIBUTE KIND OF BLIVET TO VALUE (DISK)"
In the compilation of the program, this permanently overrides the device
assignment:
    "COMPILE <object-program-name> .... FILE BLIVET (KIND=DISK); ..."
    (to modify the *compiler's* file you precede the keyword FILE with
COMPILER)
After the program's compiled you can also change it permanently by:
    "WFL MODIFY <object-program-name> FILE BLIVET (KIND=DISK);"

The "handle" by which the file is known to the system is the name by which
it was declared in the program -- in this instance "BLIVET". That "handle"
is itself a file attribute, INTNAME, subject to the same set of mechanisms;
the externally-visible name can thus be changed to be different from what's
used in the program, to no particular ill effect.

    -Chuck Stevens

"Lueko Willms" <l.willms@jpberlin.de> wrote in message
news:9NP2iZw9flB@jpberlin-l.willms.jpberlin.de...
> . On 23.12.04
> wrote charles.stevens@unisys.com (Chuck Stevens)
> on /COMP/LANG/COBOL
> in cqet70$1v83$1@si05.rsvl.unisys.com
> about Re: COBOL
>
>
> CS> While IBM may have favored such intutively-clear device-names as
> CS> "SYS00C-UR-2540R-S" at one time, Unisys MCP-based systems have gone
> CS> more toward such unfathomable mnemonics as "READER" and "DISK" in
> CS> this context, believing that more specific assignation than that is
> CS> rightly more the purview of the operating environment than of the
> CS> COBOL program itself.
>
>
> Similar on the OS/2200 side -- there were three standard devices:
> CARDREADER, CARDPUNCH and PRINTER, similar to UNIX' so popular SYSIN,
> SYSOUT and SYSERR. Then of course, DISC and TAPE, with a second name
> referring to the name actually used in the runstream, i.e. job.
>
>
> Yours,
> Lüko Willms http://www.willms-edv.de
> /--------- L.WILLMS@jpberlin.de -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --
>
> Es gibt eine wahre und eine förmliche Orthographie. -G.C.Lichtenberg