Calling a Program or a Procedure

In ILE you can call either a program or a procedure. ILE requires that the caller identify whether the target of the call statement is a program or a procedure. ILE languages communicate this requirement by having separate call statements for programs and for procedures. Therefore, when you write your ILE program, you must know whether you are calling a program or a procedure.

Each ILE language has unique syntax that allows you to distinguish between a dynamic program call and a static procedure call. The standard call statement in each ILE language defaults to either a dynamic program call or a static procedure call. For RPG and COBOL the default is a dynamic program call, and for C the default is a static procedure call. Thus, the standard language call performs the same type of function in either OPM or ILE. This convention makes migrating from an OPM language to an ILE language relatively easy.

To determine how long your procedure names can be, see your ILE HLL programmer’s guide.