Re: New "base document" available

Roger,
As we have indicated, those implementations (and there are several) that
support X/Open do have a "portable" way of doing this. The entire concept of
"command line" is NOT a universal thing, so providing such a thing in ANY COBOL
specification - by definition - isn't "portable".

As an "implementor" - I would suggest implementing the X/Open specification
(both for command-lines and for environment variables). As a USER of a specific
implementation, if they don't support this already, I would contact your vendor
and ask for it.

As someone who wants it in an ANSI/ISO Standard, then you should contact those
COBOL groups and get it prioritized. I can personally ALMOST guarantee that it
won't be added in the next revision, but it is (as Rick indicated) already on
the list for the revision after that (if any <G>).

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"Roger While" <simrw@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eujvvp$nur$03$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Question remains .
How do I compatibitly retrieve command parameters.
eg. ACU does not know anything about ARGUMENT_xxx
(and presumably no mainframe variant)

Roger

"Rick Smith" <ricksmith@xxxxxxx> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:130qvifhagkpf04@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Roger While" <simrw@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eujplg$e11$02$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
ARGUMENT-NAME/NUMBER are MF inventions.
Question remains.

It's ARGUMENT-NUMBER and ARGUMENT-VALUE
and these are the terms used in "X/Open CAE Specification
COBOL Language" (c) December 1991, X/Open Company
Limited. [This document is available in PDF from
< www.opengroup.org >; but requires registration.]

Page 166, "8.6 ACCESS TO COMMAND LINE
ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Function
The following formats of the ACCEPT statement retrieve
the number of arguments on the command line and the value
of a command line argument or an environment variable.
The following formats of the DISPLAY statement specify
the position of an argument within the command line, the
name of an environment variable and store a value in the
specified environment variable."

[Four pages of text (formats, rules, and examples)
not reproduced here.]

Micro Focus appears to deviate from the specification
by allowing the names to be used, directly, in ACCEPT
and DISPLAY statements, rather than only in the
SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph.







.

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