Compiler option changes in Enterprise COBOL V6

The following options are added:
Table 1. Compiler options new with Enterprise COBOL Version 6
Compiler option Comments
CONDCOMP New option in Enterprise COBOL V6.3 with the service PTFs. It affects the behavior of conditional compilation directives and controls how conditional code will be displayed in the listing.
COPYLOC New option in Enterprise COBOL V6.1 with the service PTFs, V6.2 with the service PTFs, and from V6.3. It can be used to add either a PDSE (or PDS) dataset or z/OS® UNIX directory as an additional location to be searched for copy members during the library phase.
DEFINE New option from Enterprise COBOL V6.2. It assigns a literal value to a compilation variable that is defined in the program by using the DEFINE directive with the PARAMETER phrase.
INITCHECK New option in Enterprise COBOL V6.1 with the service PTFs and from V6.2. It controls whether to check for uninitialized data items and issue warning messages when they are used without being initialized.
INITIAL New option in Enterprise COBOL V6.2 with the service PTFs and from V6.3. It causes a program and all of its nested programs to behave as if the IS INITIAL clause was specified on the PROGRAM-ID paragraph.
INLINE New option in Enterprise COBOL V6.1 with the service PTFs and from V6.2 and later versions. It controls the compiler to consider whether to inline procedures referenced by PERFORM statements in the source program. INLINE is a potential performance boosting option. (Note that INLINE was always in effect in COBOL V5.)
INVDATA New option in Enterprise COBOL V6.2 with the service PTFs and from V6.3. The option supercedes the deprecated ZONEDATA option. It tells the compiler whether data in USAGE DISPLAY and PACKED-DECIMAL data items is valid, and if not, what the behavior of the compiler should be.
To ease your migration to COBOL V5 or V6:
  • If your digits, sign code, and zone bits are valid, use NOINVDATA and the same NUMPROC setting that you used with COBOL V4 when using COBOL V5 or V6.
    Note: If you used NUMPROC(MIG) in V4, it is no longer available in COBOL V5 or V6 and you should use NUMPROC(NOPFD) in this scenario instead.
  • If you have invalid digits, invalid sign code, or invalid zone bits:
    • If you used NUMPROC(MIG) with COBOL V4, use INVDATA(FORCENUMCMP,NOCLEANSIGN) and NUMPROC(NOPFD) with COBOL V5 or V6.
    • If you used NUMPROC(NOPFD) with COBOL V4, use INVDATA(NOFORCENUMCMP,CLEANSIGN) (or simply INVDATA) with COBOL V5 or V6.
    • If you used NUMPROC(PFD) with COBOL V4, use INVDATA(NOFORCENUMCMP,CLEANSIGN) (or simply INVDATA) with COBOL V5 or V6.
LP New option from Enterprise COBOL V6.3. It can be used to indicate whether an AMODE 31 (31-bit) or AMODE 64 (64-bit) program should be generated with the related language features enabled.
NUMCHECK New option in Enterprise COBOL V6.1 with the service PTFs and from V6.2. It controls whether to generate implicit numeric class tests for zoned decimal and packed decimal data items that are used as sending data items, and whether to generate SIZE ERROR checking for binary data items.
PARMCHECK New option in Enterprise COBOL V6.1 with the service PTFs and from V6.2. It tells the compiler to generate an extra data item following the last item in WORKING-STORAGE. This buffer data item is then used at run time to check whether a called subprogram corrupted data beyond the end of WORKING-STORAGE.
SUPPRESS New option from Enterprise COBOL V6.1. It controls whether to ignore the SUPPRESS phrase of COPY statements.
TUNE New option from Enterprise COBOL V6.3 with the service PTFs. It specifies the architecture for which the executable program will be optimized.

The default TUNE level matches the ARCH level if ARCH is specified. If ARCH is not specified, both ARCH and TUNE default to 8.
VSAMOPENFS New option from Enterprise COBOL V6.1. It affects the user file status reported from successful VSAM OPEN statements that require verified file integrity check.

The following options are modified:

Table 2. Compiler option changed with Enterprise COBOL Version 6
Compiler option Comments
AFP It controls the compiler usage of the Additional Floating Point (AFP) registers that are provided by z/Architecture® processors.
  • In Enterprise COBOL V6.1, AFP(VOLATILE) is the default.
  • From Enterprise COBOL V6.2, AFP(NOVOLATILE) is the default.
ARCH It specifies the machine architecture for which the executable program instructions are to be generated.
  • In Enterprise COBOL V6.1, ARCH(7) is the default.
  • In Enterprise COBOL V6.2, a new higher level of ARCH(12) is accepted, and ARCH(7) is still the default.
  • In Enterprise COBOL V6.3, ARCH(7) is removed, and a new higher level of ARCH(13) is accepted. ARCH(8) is the default.
CURRENCY From Enterprise COBOL 6.3, the literal argument to the CURRENCY option can no longer be the character 'U' or the character 'u'.
INITCHECK In Enterprise COBOL V6.1 with the service PTFs, V6.2 with the service PTFs, and from V6.3 with the service PTFs, new suboptions LAX | STRICT are added to the INITCHECK option to control whether the compiler will issue warning messages for data items unless they are initialized on at least one, or on all, logical paths to a statement.
LANGUAGE

To change to uppercase English or Japanese compiler messages in COBOL V6, in addition to using the LANGUAGE compiler option, you must also set the Language Environment® runtime option NATLANG at compile time. We recommend using CEEOPTS DD in the compile JCL.

For example, to change messages to Japanese, use the LANGUAGE(JA) compiler option and also specify the NATLANG LE runtime option at compile time: 
//CEEOPTS DD * 
          NATLANG(JPN)
/*
MAXPCF New option. It instructs the compiler not to optimize code if the program contains a complexity factor greater than n.
  • In Enterprise COBOL V6.1, MAXPCF(60000) is the default.
  • From Enterprise COBOL V6.2, MAXPCF(100000) is the default.
NOSTGOPT In Enterprise COBOL V6.1, data items can get optimized with OPT(2) even when NOSTGOPT was in effect. In Enterprise COBOL V6.1 with the service PTFs and from V6.2, NOSTGOPT was changed so that no optimization of storage or data items occurs even with OPT(2). This is especially helpful for WORKING-STORAGE eye-catchers.
NUMCHECK From Enterprise COBOL V6.3, when invalid data is found at compile time, regardless of whether NUMCHECK(MSG) or NUMCHECK(ABD) is in effect, an error-level message is produced and the check is removed.
RULES In Enterprise COBOL V6.2 with the service PTFs and from V6.3, the following new suboptions are added to the RULES compiler option:
  • OMITODOMIN | NOOMITODOMIN tells the compiler whether to issue warning messages for any OCCURS DEPENDING ON clauses that are specified without integer-1 (the minimum number of occurrences).
  • UNREF | NOUNREFALL | NOUNREFSOURCE tells the compiler whether to issue warning messages for unreferenced data items, and to control whether the reporting is done only for data items not declared in a copy member (NOUNREFSOURCE) or all data items (NOUNREFALL).
  • LAXREDEF | NOLAXREDEF tells the compiler whether to issue warning messages when a data item is redefined to a smaller item on any level.
SOURCE From Enterprise COBOL V6.3 with the service PTFs, new suboptions DEC | HEX are added to SOURCE compiler option. If SOURCE(DEC) is in effect, the line numbers for the listing of the source will be in decimal format. If SOURCE(HEX) is in effect, the line numbers for the listing of the source will be in hexadecimal format.
SSRANGE In Enterprise COBOL V6.1 with the service PTFs and from V6.2, new suboptions MSG | ABD are added to the SSRANGE compiler option to control the runtime behavior of the COBOL program when a range check fails.
TEST From Enterprise COBOL V6.2, new suboptions SEPARATE | NOSEPARATE are added to the TEST compiler option to control program object size on disk while retaining debugging capability. In addition, new combinations of suboptions are supported in both the TEST and NOTEST compiler options, including TEST(NODWARF), TEST(SEPARATE), and NOTEST(DWARF,SOURCE).

The following options are removed:

Table 3. Compiler option not available in Enterprise COBOL Version 6
Compiler option Comments
LVLINFO From Enterprise COBOL V6.1, the LVLINFO installation option is removed. The build level information is put where LVLINFO used to be, and the SERVICE compiler option can be used for user service level information in place of LVLINFO.
ZONECHECK In Enterprise COBOL V6.1 with the service PTFs and from V6.2, ZONECHECK is deprecated but is tolerated for compatibility, and it is replaced by NUMCHECK(ZON).

For a detailed list of options supported for the various compiler versions, see Option comparison.

For a detailed list of compiler options that can affect performance, see How to tune compiler options to get the most out of V6 in the Enterprise COBOL Performance Tuning Guide.

For detailed descriptions of all the compiler options, see Compiler options in the Enterprise COBOL Programming Guide.