Precedence of USE procedures

This difference affects the precedence of USE procedures relating to contained programs.

In VS COBOL II Release 3.x, a file-specific USE procedure always takes precedence over a mode-specific USE procedure. This precedence occurs if an applicable mode-specific USE procedure exists in the current program, or if a mode-specific USE procedure with the GLOBAL attribute in an outer program is "nearer" than the file-specific procedure.

In VS COBOL II Release 4 and Enterprise COBOL, USE procedure precedence is based on a program by program level; from the current program to the containing program for that program, and so on to the outermost program.

The following message will be issued if an Enterprise COBOL generated program selects a different USE procedure than would have been used by the VS COBOL II Release 3.x program:

IGYSC2300-I: A mode-specific declarative may be selected for file "file-name" in program "program-name." Execution results may differ from VS COBOL II Release 3.x.