The -Cp HP COBOL Compatibility Switch

The -Cp compiler switch allows ACUCOBOL-GT to accept HP COBOL extensions to the ANSI 1985 Standard. These extensions are described in the following subsections, organized in the order in which the extension occurs in a COBOL program.

The use of the -Cp option with the ACUCOBOL-GT compiler triggers the following HP COBOL-specific behavior.

• The ACUCOBOL-GT precompiler for HP COBOL is invoked. The precompiler supports conditional compilation via these directives.
  • $IF
  • $SET
  • $COMMENT
  • $PREPROCESSOR
  • $DEFINE
  • $INCLUDE
  Macro substitutions with parameters are supported. $CONTROL directives are not supported. However, many of the actions accomplished by $CONTROL directives can be accomplished with ACUCOBOL-GT compiler switches. The precompiler is discussed in detail in Preprocessor for HP COBOL.
• STRING/UNSTRING statements and relation conditions are accepted.
• The following HP COBOL extensions are accepted:
  • The percent character (%) is allowed as an indicator of an octal-based numeric literal.
  • HP extensions to the COPY statement, including those that copy a file from a resident library. COPY REPLACING statements within nested Copy books are not supported.
  • Special Names Paragraph switches SW0 through SW15
  • The Special Names TOP and NO SPACE CONTROL phrases with the ADVANCING clause of the WRITE statement.
  • The HP meaning of RANDOM in the File-Control paragraph
  • The Procedure Division registers: CURRENT-DATE, TALLY, TIME-OF-DAY, and WHEN-COMPILED
  • HP extensions to the ACCEPT statement
  • HP extensions to the CALL statement
  • The ENTRY statement
  • The EXAMINE statement

• The following HP COBOL extensions are not supported. These extensions are not commonly used and are largely considered to be obsolete.

  The following extensions cause ACUCOBOL-GT to issue a warning but do not cause compilation to terminate:

  • COBOLLOCK
  • COBOLUNLOCK
  • EXCLUSIVE
  • UN-EXCLUSIVE

  These unsupported extensions are not recognized by the compiler and cause compilation to terminate:

  • BEGINNING
  • COMMON
  • ENABLE
  • ENDING
  • FILE-LIMITS
  • MORE-LABELS
  • PROCESSING
  • SEEK

Successful compilation results in the creation of an ACUCOBOL-GT object file that is ready for immediate execution by the runtime. There is no link step.