=========================================================================
M I C R O F O C U S C O B O L
V3.1.39
Running Under The DG/UX Operating System Version 5.4.2
On The AViiON
=========================================================================
RELEASE NOTES
=============
TABLE OF CONTENTS
=================
INTRODUCTION
ON-DISK DOCUMENTATION
MACHINE REQUIREMENTS
PRINTED DOCUMENTATION
EARLY RELEASE FEATURES
ERRORS FIXED
ENHANCEMENTS
RESTRICTIONS
KNOWN ERRORS
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
INTRODUCTION
============
These Release Notes (RNs) describe errors and restrictions found in the
software, and give other information not appropriate for the printed
manuals. Also, they introduce you to the on-disk documentation, which
supplements the manuals.
Additions and amendments to the manuals are given in a separate on-disk
document called the Documentation Update Notes (DUNs); its file-name
is dun.1.
Where an entry arose from a problem or enhancement request that has a
reference number, the reference number is given. This is to enable
Product Support to help you more quickly if you should need to call them.
These numbers are called Product Discrepancy Report (PDR) numbers. In
addition each group of entries has beneath its heading a note of the
build at which it first appeared in the Release Notes.
ON-DISK DOCUMENTATION
=====================
This release includes the following on-disk documents:
main.1 - Release Notes
dun.1 - Documentation Update Notes
changes.1 - Compatibility with Previous Releases
The following on-disk documents should be regarded as additional
chapters, or additions to chapters, in your COBOL System Reference or
COBOL User Guide:
early.1 - Early Release Features
rte.1 - COBOL Run-Time System
Early Release features are documented in on-disk documents as listed in
the on-disk document early.1.
Corrections and additions too small for separate on-disk documents are
given in the DUNs.
MACHINE REQUIREMENTS
====================
o The DG/UX operating system Version 5.4.2
o AViiON
o The system utilities ar r, nm, ld, cc, as,
which are required by the various phases of cob to support
full Micro Focus COBOL functionality
o To run successfully, your Micro Focus COBOL System requires a minimum
of 5 Mbytes of temporary disk space for a single user. For any
additional users, you should increase the disk space by the combined
size of the $COBDIR/coblib/libcobol.a file and the COBOL source
file for each user.
The amount of temporary disk space that each user requires can
increase significantly when SORT or MERGE operations are performed,
as these features can create temporary work files related to the size
of the files being sorted or merged.
Temporary work files are put in the directory specified by the
system-defined "TMPDIR" environment variable. If TMPDIR is not set,
the system default temporary directory will be used instead (as
defined by the value of "P_tmpdir" in stdio.h).
PRINTED DOCUMENTATION
=====================
Micro Focus COBOL V3.1 has the following printed manuals:
o Getting Started with COBOL (Issue 3, April 1993)
o Language Reference (Issue 13, April 1993)
o COBOL System Reference (Issue 1, April 1993)
o COBOL User Guide (Issue 1, April 1993)
o Error Messages (Issue 9, April 1993)
o COBOL Pocket Guide (Issue 6, April 1993)
o Compatibility Guide (Issue 3, April 1993)
EARLY RELEASE FEATURES
======================
Early Release features are selected features, being developed for future
Micro Focus products, which have reached a sufficiently advanced stage to
allow us to make them available to you for you to investigate. We believe
they will be of great interest and value to you in their current form.
See the on-disk document early.1 for details of these components and for
further details of Micro Focus's Early Release policy.
ERRORS FIXED
============
The following errors are fixed in this release.
Animator - Errors Fixed
--------------V3.1.39--
Where appropriate, these entries also apply to Base Animator.
o When using Do, if you missed the end quote from a literal, you got
the the error message "Undefined Error. Contact technical support".
This has been corrected so that you now get "Illegal format :
Literal".
o Some examples of COPY REPLACING caused the Step command to take you
to the wrong line in the source.
o Environment Until did not work across subprograms.
o If you repeatedly pressed Escape to escape from the Alter Path menu,
you could use Animator functions on the screen full of sequence
numbers produced.
o If you did not put a trailing "\" on the path you specified on the
Alter Path menu, the path was not found.
o If you did a Query Repeat after deleting monitor, the monitor that
appeared replaced an existing monitor instead of appearing as an
additional monitor.
Compiler - Errors Fixed (Syntax Check Phase)
-----------------------------------V3.1.39--
o The compiler erroneously reported an error for key length in an FD
when there was a 78 level specified in the FD area.
o In an ANSI ACCEPT into a PIC G or PIC N data item, the data item was
not padded with the DBSPACE character when the input was shorter than
the target item.
o (This would only affect you when using the add-on product
Toolbox.)
Under certain conditions such when you had just entered the menu
system, the COBOL Editor failed to load the COBOL source to show
error lines after syntax errors were detected.
o UNSTRING did not work properly when acting on group items with OCCURS
DEPENDING clauses.
o A comment appearing on the line after word that was to be replaced
(as part of COPY REPLACING or REPLACE) caused compiler error
messages.
o The compiler did not warn against incorrect use of continuation
characters in conditional compilation.
o The compiler gave error S-4 ("Illegal character") when identifiers
were started and delimited by shift-out and shift-in characters.
o The compiler did not warn about code made unreachable with the
NEXT SENTENCE phrase.
o Some examples of COPY REPLACING did not work.
o If you had an NCHAR literal which was a condition-name associated
with a alphanumeric item, testing the condition gave FALSE when it
should have given TRUE.
o When running a program compiled with the ODOSLIDE directive and
containing Linkage Section data items specified with the OCCURS
DEPENDING ON clause, a protection violation trap sometimes resulted.
o Error message A 207-S ("FD, CD or SD qualification syntax error") was
erroneously produced when compiling a program in which two file
description entries (FD's) used the same 01 record-name.
o The Animator sometimes erroneously skipped valid source lines
when animating a preprocessed program.
o The compiler erroneously flagged a record in a file description entry
(FD) as being of zero length if its definition was followed by a
78-level item.
o The parameter for FOLDCOPYNAME in the settings part of THE listing
file was wrong.
o The FOLDCOPYNAME directive did not fold COPY-file names that were not
in quotes.
o The CSI/XREF information for items used in the SOURCE clause of
Report Writer was incorrect.
File Handler - Errors Fixed
------------------V3.1.39--
o When reading variable length records, data in memory beyond the end
of the current record was overwritten.
o If 19 files were open, opening a nonexistent 20th file I-O gave a
status of 0/0 instead of 0/5.
o (This would only affect you when using the add-on product
Toolbox. )
Rolling back a DELETE on an indexed file using Fileshare V2
could give a protection violation.
o (This would only affect you when using the add-on product
Toolbox. )
Rolling back a WRITE on IDXFORMAT"4" files didn't work correctly with
Fileshare V2.
o Single key variable-length indexed files were corrupted if you did
two REWRITEs in succession, each of which made a record smaller.
o Single key variable-length indexed files were corrupted if you
DELETEd a record which had previously been made smaller by a REWRITE.
o No record was returned if EXTFHBUF was set to 65521 or more.
ENHANCEMENTS
============
The following enhancements are made in this release.
None.
RESTRICTIONS
============
The following restrictions are newly documented in this release.
Compiler (Checker phase) - Restrictions
---------------------------------------
o If you specify group item in the Screen Section with any LINE or
COLUMN clause (at any level of the hierarchy), then you must also
specify at least one elementary item with a VALUE clause or a
USING/FROM/TO clause. If you violate this rule, your program may
hang at run-time. It is Micro Focus' intention that a future release
of the Language Reference will document this requirement and that a
future release of the Checker software will detect such syntax and
issue an error. Until this software detection is available, each
programmer should manually insure that they have not violated this
rule.
Documented at V3.1.31
=====================
The following restrictions, documented at V3.1.31, still apply in this
release.
Compiler - Restrictions (Generate phase)
-------------------------------V3.1.31--
o Technical Committee X3J4 has recognized that the COBOL standard is
unclear about the meaning of ordinal numbers when specifying an
ALPHABET-NAME (other than NATIVE) in the SYMBOLIC CHARACTERS clause
of the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph. Therefore, cross-system or upward
compatible results cannot be guaranteed.
Micro Focus recommends that you do not use the ALPHABET-NAME option
in the SYMBOLIC CHARACTERS clause if ordinal numbers are used.
Instead, you should either use literals or reference the ordinal
numbers from the native collating sequence.
o The behavior of the CANCEL statement, when it refers to an entry
point within a program, is undefined. Therefore the behavior of a
program that uses this syntax, and any program which contains an
entry point which has been cancelled, is unpredictable.
File Handling - Restrictions
-------------------V3.1.31--
o When migrating existing applications from early versions of COBOL, it
may be necessary to rebuild indexed files. RTS error 114 may occur if
this is not done. See your COBOL System Reference for information on
how to do this.
o The File Handler utilities do not support NLS files on the SCO UNIX
and AIX operating systems.
o Programs compiled with the OSVS, VSC2, DOSVS or COBOL370 directive,
when opening a variable-length file, do not perform minimum record
length checking. This is true when using ISAM files or relative
or sequential files using Extfh.
Sample Programs - Restrictions
---------------------V3.1.31--
o The p2hello1.cbl demonstration program listed in the appendix "Sample
Programs" in your Toolbox Operating Guide is only available on
environments that support Panels Version 2 (currently SCO and AIX).
Windowing Syntax - Restrictions
----------------------V3.1.31--
o If you COPY a file into a program, the windowing subsystem will not
use the OSEXT directive or append the default extension
.cbl onto the file. This means that the file-name in your program
must be identical to the file-name on the disk in order for the COPY
to be successful.
o The windowing subsystem does not support the COBCPY environment
variable to locate COPY files. You should link your COPY files to the
current directory.
KNOWN ERRORS
============
The following known errors are newly documented in this release.
Installation Script - Known Errors
-------------------------V3.1.39--
o The text displayed when the Installation Script cannot find the
sockets library is misleading. It implies that you will be unable to
use CCI, whereas in fact this only prevents you using CCI with a
statically linked executable file.
Documented at V3.1.31
=====================
The following known errors, documented at V3.1.31, still apply in this
release.
Animator - Known Errors
--------------V3.1.31--
o If Animator encounters an incompatible .idy file, it causes a
run-time error 114 ("Attempt to access item beyond bounds of
memory").
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
=========================
The following supplementary information is newly documented at this
release.
None.
Documented at V3.1.31
=====================
The following supplementary information, documented at V3.1.31, still
applies.
General - Supplementary Information
--------------------------V3.1.31--
o This release of Micro Focus software carries an identification code;
you should always quote this number when contacting Micro Focus for
any reason concerning this product. To obtain this number you should
enter either:
cat $COBDIR/cobver <enter>
or:
cob -V <enter>
which will display the file, and on the second line you will see:
PRN=xxxxxxxx
where "xxxxxxxx" is the number you should quote.
o .int and .gnt code produced by Micro Focus products earlier than the
COBOL/2 range, for example LEVEL II COBOL/ET, cannot be run using
this product. Your source files will first need to be recompiled. If
they are not, RTS error 165 ("Version number incompatibility") is
returned.
o To avoid the possibility of clashes between user-defined names and
Micro Focus COBOL symbol names, you should not start any
program-names or entry-point names with the prefixes mF_, mFt_, cob
or CBL_.
Animating - Supplementary Information
----------------------------V3.1.31--
o When you animate a program which has either been compiled with the RM
directive or the alternate file status table has been selected at
Run-Time, and in both cases no file status bytes have been defined, a
Run-Time System (RTS) error returned as a result of a file I-O error
will be the Micro Focus error. If you wish to determine the status
error applicable to the directives you have set, you must use the
Query command on the file in which the error occurred to obtain the
file status returned.
Application Design - Supplementary Information
-------------------------------------V3.1.31--
o When building an executable file which does not require any variable
length records, we recommend that you explicitly exclude the Micro
Focus variable record file handler, mFFH. You do this by adding:
-X mFFH
to your cob command line. For simple programs without any dynamic
loading, this should result in smaller executable files. If you
exclude mFFH, but a variable length record file operation is
subsequently performed at run time, you will receive run-time system
error:
107 Operation not implemented in this Run-Time System
o You must not use the following as program-names:
ad, al, ar, as, at,
du, dv, dx, dy, dz,
n1, n2, n3,
or any name beginning "cg".
o If you try to move a nonnumeric literal to a numeric elementary item,
the Compiler will actually move zeros unless you specify the RM
Compiler directive. This also happens if you try to move one of the
nonnumeric figurative constants SPACE, LOW-VALUES or HIGH-VALUES to a
numeric elementary item.
o When you do not specify a LOCK MODE IS clause for file locking,
the default locking is used. Files opened for INPUT are
shareable, files opened for OUTPUT, I-O or EXTEND are exclusive. Note
that although the default locking for relative and indexed
sequential files opened EXTEND is exclusive, this may change in
future releases of the Micro Focus COBOL product. Thus we recommend
that you explicitly specify "exclusive" within your programs for
those files which you wish to open EXTEND.
o When you include variable length syntax in your source code, it will
have no effect on line sequential files.
o The Micro Focus COBOL run-time system directly controls the terminal
to which it is attached; that is, it deals with optimizing the screen
output and handling keyboard input. Therefore, you should always
perform screen I-O using the run-time system via the ACCEPT/DISPLAY
syntax, or if using C, via the cobprintf family of calls. You should
not attempt to read or write directly to the terminal. The use of
highlighting, cursor positioning and other such terminal attributes
can be handled using the appropriate COBOL syntax. See your Language
Reference for further details.
o When you compile a program containing a PROGRAM-ID clause with the
OSVS directive set, the Compiler will ignore any information
following this clause until it reaches a syntactically correct
division heading. If you have misspelled the division heading
following the PROGRAM-ID clause, the Compiler will continue to ignore
any information following this heading until it reaches the next
correctly spelled division heading.
o The limits specified in the chapter "System Limits and Programming
Restrictions" in your COBOL System Reference are set by your Micro
Focus COBOL software. However, these limits may be altered by other
limits set by your operating system. For example, the operating
system limit for the maximum number of files that can be open
simultaneously may be different from the limit set by Micro Focus
because of the maximum number of locks allowed per process, or the
maximum number of open files allowed per process. Therefore, if the
number of files allowed system-wide was large, but the number of
locks allowed was much smaller, then the limit on the number of locks
would be the limiting factor on the number files COBOL could OPEN.
Configuration - Supplementary Information
--------------------------------V3.1.31--
o The $COBDIR/src/mfisamv4 directory contains a version of the Micro
Focus fixed record length ISAM file handler that is based on Informix
C-ISAM (c) v4.10. You can rebuild your COBOL run-time system to use
this file handler by default. This will enable ISAM files created by
your COBOL product to be moved between COBOL and non-COBOL
applications that use Informix C-ISAM as their data storage
mechanism.
To rebuild your COBOL run-time system, enter:
mkrts mfisam4.o
This will produce an executable rts32 that you should copy to your
COBOL system directory.
Note: ISAM files created by this rebuilt COBOL run-time system
cannot be manipulated by the File Handler utilities provided
as part of your COBOL system.
o Your COBOL System Reference indicates that certain features of the
Micro Focus COBOL system are available only on certain types of
implementation. $COBDIR/cobver contains a Product Type Identifier
(PTI) field which identifies the type of your particular
implementation. This can be any of the following:
Kanji-EUC Your product supports Kanji using EUC coding
Kanji-SHIFTJIS Your product supports Kanji using Shift JIS coding
NLS Your product includes Native Language Support
features
FED Your product supports TI's FED features
If a PTI is shown in $COBDIR/cobver, your particular implementation
supports those features which your COBOL System Reference identifies
as supported by that type of implementation. The PTI follows the PRN,
and if more than one PTI applies to your implementation, each will
appear on a separate line.
o Your Micro Focus COBOL software is supplied already configured to run
on your machine. Full details on how you can change the default
configuration and how you can control various machine independent
features, such as the message texts output by the Micro Focus COBOL
system, are given in your COBOL System Reference. However, we
recommend that only those users with system administrator status
attempt to alter the Micro Focus COBOL system's default configuration
in any way.
Conversion Series 3 - Supplementary Information
--------------------------------------V3.1.31--
o Behavior in truncation of data moved to COMP-6 items differs between
Micro Focus COBOL and RM/COBOL. In Micro Focus COBOL, should
truncation occur when you move data into a COMP-6 item, the
truncation will occur according to the rules for moves to Micro Focus
COBOL COMP fields.
Conversion Series 5 - Supplementary Information
--------------------------------------V3.1.31--
o Moving LOW-VALUES to a numeric data item is not a valid operation on
the Micro Focus COBOL system. If your program attempts to do this
ZERO is moved instead.
o When running convert5, alphanumeric IDENTIFIER values must be
enclosed within quotation marks.
File Handling - Supplementary Information
--------------------------------V3.1.31--
o If you receive an undocumented error during a file operation, you
must recode your application so that it uses file status bytes. You
must then check the file status bytes for the exact error.
Printing - Supplementary Information
---------------------------V3.1.31--
o ASSIGN TO PRINTER does not send output to a printer; it sends it to
LPT1 instead. In order to send output to a physical printer you must
use the dd_LPT1 environment variable. If your system supports the lp
printer spooler you should use:
dd_LPT1=">lp";export dd_LPT1
Screen Attributes - Supplementary Information
------------------------------------V3.1.31--
If you want to change the attributes used on the screen by the Animator
you can edit the system configuration file
MFTOOLS.CFG.
You can have a mixture of color and monochrome attribute specifications
in your configuration file. Only those relevant to the screen type of the
machine you are running on will have any effect during the initialization
phase.
Color Screen:
There are 16 system attributes which can be defined in the configuration
file. The format of an entry in this file for an attribute specification
for a color screen is:
attribute-name: foreground ON background [BLINK]
For example,
SYS-ATT-11: Brown ON Black
where words can be in mixed case. The naming convention is to use the
"system attribute name" where each attribute is termed SYS-ATT-n where n
is a number between 1 and 16. These names correspond to the names used on
the menu when you are setting colors as follows:
SYS-ATT-1 - reserved
SYS-ATT-2 - reserved
SYS-ATT-3 - Menu-text
SYS-ATT-4 - Key-tops
SYS-ATT-5 - Tell-tales
SYS-ATT-6 - Lock-on
SYS-ATT-7 - Animated-text
SYS-ATT-8 - Error-messages
SYS-ATT-9 - reserved
SYS-ATT-10 - Margins
SYS-ATT-11 - Normal-text
SYS-ATT-12 - Current-line
SYS-ATT-13 - reserved
SYS-ATT-14 - reserved
SYS-ATT-15 - reserved
SYS-ATT-16 - reserved
The following colors can be used for either foreground or background:
BLACK
BLUE
GREEN
CYAN
RED
MAGENTA
BROWN
LIGHT-GREY
and the following colors can be used in addition for foreground only:
DARK-GREY
LIGHT-BLUE
LIGHT-GREEN
LIGHT-CYAN
LIGHT-RED
LIGHT-MAGENTA
YELLOW
WHITE
The colors can be entered in mixed case, but must be spelled as above for
the system to be correctly colorized.
You can also use the attribute BLINK on a color terminal. If included, it
will cause any text defined in the particular attribute to flash on and
off. Note that on a windowing environment BLINK may not work.
Monochrome Screen:
The format of an attribute specification for a mono screen is:
attribute-name<D>: {NORMAL } [HIGHLIGHT] [BLINK]
{INVISIBLE }
{REVERSE-VIDEO}
For example:
SYS-ATT-08: NORMAL HIGHLIGHT
The following attributes can be specified for a monochrome screen:
NORMAL
UNDERLINE
REVERSE-VIDEO
BLINK
HIGHLIGHT
INVISIBLE
BLINK and HIGHLIGHT are optional and may be included together or
separately.
X/OPEN Portability - Supplementary Information
-------------------------------------V3.1.31--
o When invoking COBOL from C in conjunction with the X/Open syntax
ACCEPT FROM ARGUMENT-VALUE, argc and argv will not be passed from the
command line to the COBOL program.
=========================================================================
Micro Focus and FORMS-2 are registered trademarks of Micro Focus Limited
Micro Focus COBOL, Micro Focus COBOL Toolbox, Micro Focus COBOL/2, VS
COBOL, LEVEL II COBOL/ET and Animator are trademarks of Micro Focus
Limited.
UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories Inc.
RM/COBOL is a registered trademark of Ryan-McFarland Corporation.
X/Open is a trademark of the X/Open Company Limited.
=========================================================================
@(#)Vrn/main.1/3.1.02/04May93/nrV
Copyright (C) 1992-93 Micro Focus Limited