Changes with Enterprise COBOL Version 6 that might affect vendor tools

  • The allocation and management of WORKING-STORAGE SECTION have been changed since Enterprise COBOL V5. This does not affect the execution of the COBOL program. Tools or programs that need to locate the starting address of the WORKING-STORAGE SECTION might be affected. For details, see WORKING-STORAGE SECTION changes.
  • Enterprise COBOL 6 uses interprocess communication (IPC) message queues within the compiler. Therefore, if you compile in z/OS® UNIX with cob2 and the compiler experiences an internal error and gets terminated with a KILL signal, you will need to query any message queues that are left over when the compiler is killed and remove the stale message queues. You can remove the stale message queues with the following z/OS UNIX commands:
    1. Enter ipcs -q to list queues.
    2. Find queues associated with your user ID.
    3. Enter ipcrm -q to delete queues.

    If you compile in z/OS batch, you do not have to remove stale message queues after a compiler error.

  • PPA1 changes in Enterprise COBOL 6.3

    Starting in Enterprise COBOL 6.3, bit 30 of flag3 (offset X'1C') of PPA1 may be set to indicate that the Extended Flag field is present. If this bit is set, the extended flag will have bit 0 set to indicate that Vector Registers Area is in the optional area. This should not affect tools or program code that are accessing PPA1 according to the Language Environment® interface. Refer to the z/OS Language Environment Vendor Interfaces for details about PPA1.