HP OpenVMS Systems

Use of COBOL COPY REPLACING syntax?

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The Question is:

 
The question :
Is there any way to replace a portion of text in COBOL when using the Copy
 Replace By statement?
 
Background :
I am trying to use the COBOL
 
COPY "R.LIB" REPLACING ==WS== BY ==WS-HOLD==
 
statement in VMS COBOL Version 5 6.60.
 
R.LIB
01  WS-TOP-LEVEL.
   03  WS-FIELD1 PIC X(01)
   03  WS-FIELD2 PIC X(10).
.....................
   03  WS-FIELD200 PIC X(5).
 
The replacing statement does not replace the WS with WS-HOLD.  After consulting
 the manual it says a full text word is required.
 
I have seen COBOL allow this on many other platforms so presume that there is a
 small syntactical error.
 
 

The Answer is :

 
  Without some explanation of what is going wrong, it's a bit difficult
  for the OpenVMS Wizard to know what to say about this.  However, there
  are a number of potential problems with the posted code.
 
  First, the file specification in the COPY statement should be enclosed
  in double quotes.  Next, there is a missing period at the end of the
  statement.
 
  Inside the COPY file, there is no PIC clause or period on the 03 item.
  All the above are likely to cause errors in the compilation.
 
  So, if the statement is replaced with:
 
    COPY "R.LIB" REPLACING ==WS== BY ==WS-HOLD==.
 
  and R.LIB with:
 
    01  WS-TOP-LEVEL.
      03  WS-FIELD1 PIC X.
 
  (also note that the OpenVMS Wizard is assuming the formatting in terms
  of area A and B is consistent with your choice of source format).
 
  Alternatively, you could simply leave out the ".LIB" part of the file
  specification:
 
    COPY R REPLACING ==WS== BY ==WS-HOLD==.
 
  There is no period to confuse COBOL and the compiler will assume a file
  type extension of .LIB for the COPY file.
 
  This will now give a clean compile, but the OpenVMS Wizard suspects that
  it won't do what you might expect. The REPLACING clause implies that you
  want to replace the substring "WS" with the substring "WS-HOLD" in each
  of the items in R.LIB. As it stands, this will not occur. This is because
  the COPY REPLACING is token-based, rather than string-based.  In R.LIB,
  the only tokens eligible for replacement are "WS-TOP-LEVEL" and
  "WS-FIELD1". Since neither matches the REPLACING token "WS", there will
  be no substitution.
 
  You can resolve this by changing both the REPLACING clause and the COPY
  file source so that the string you want to replace is a token.  The easiest
  way is using parentheses. For example, change the COPY statement to:
 
    COPY "R.LIB" REPLACING ==(WS)== BY ==WS-HOLD==.
 
  and R.LIB to:
 
    01  (WS)-TOP-LEVEL.
      03  (WS)-FIELD1 PIC X.
 
 
  The resulting source code will be:
 
    01  WS-HOLD-TOP-LEVEL.
      03  WS-HOLD-FIELD1 PIC X.
 
 

  

     

     
answer written or last revised on ( 24-OCT-2000 )
     
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