If an application written in ACUCOBOL-GT is aborted, the following exit techniques produce different results:
Catastrophic exit: A power failure, turning off the computer, or issuing a kill -9 from the console are all examples of catastrophic exits. The runtime cannot trap exits of this kind. Any files open at the
time of a catastrophic exit may be corrupted.
Graceful abort: A kill (not a kill -9) from the console and a Control-C from the keyboard are forms of program abort that ACUCOBOL-GT tries to detect. If the abort
signal is intercepted by the runtime system, the runtime will close any open files and set the user count back.
Safe mode exit: The runtime option -s instructs the runtime to trap graceful abort signals such as Control-C and prevent the abort from occurring. Only normally coded exit paths are allowed in safe mode.
Note: Even in safe mode, the runtime cannot trap a catastrophic exit. So even if you run with -s, turning off the computer or issuing a kill -9 will risk corrupting the file.