HP OpenVMS Systems

COBOL ILLAREAA Invalid Area A Error?

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The Question is:

 
I'm trying to research a problem one of our clients is having with COBOL V2.8
 under OVMS Alpha 7.3-1. He's getting "COBOL-E-ILLAREAA" Invalid Area A
 Contents message when compiling a COBOL program. I've searched for 2 hrs in
 the "natural language search"
area of this support web site, but found nothing. Can you help me?
 

The Answer is :

 
1.1.3.1 Terminal Reference Format
Compaq recommends using terminal format, a Compaq optional format,
when you create source files from interactive terminals. The compiler
accepts terminal format as the default reference format.
 
 
There are illegal characters in Area A.
Possibly, some procedure division statements are there.
 
Scraped from a manual:
 
Terminal format eliminates the line number and identification fields
of ANSI format and allows horizontal tab characters and short lines.
Terminal format saves disk space and decreases compile time. It is
easier to edit source code written in terminal format.
 
The following table shows the structure and content of a terminal
reference source line: To select ANSI format, specify the -ansi flag
(on Tru64 UNIX systems) or the /ANSI_FORMAT qualifier (on OpenVMS Alpha
systems) at compile time. You can choose this format if your COBOL
program is written for a compiler that uses ANSI format.
 
For ANSI format, the compiler expects 80-character program lines. The
following table shows the structure and content of an ANSI reference
source line:
 
Character
Positions     Contents
 
1 to 6        Optional sequence numbers
7             Indicators
8 to 11       Area A
12 to 72      Area B
73 to 80      Optional Area
 
 
 

  

     

     
answer written or last revised on ( 7-JUN-2003 )
     
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