List Tag of [GNU-COBOL] is too long

[Randall Bart <Barticus@att.net>]

I was looking at all these messages in my Gnubol mailbox with "[GNU-COBOL]" 
in every subject, and I started thinking, can we reduce the size of 
that?  When it was little used it didn't matter, but if this list is going 
to be active, I would like to see a little more of the subject line.  With 
all the columns in Eudora, there isn't much subject room (on my itty-bitty 
800x600 screen).

With many people using proportional fonts, just downcasing it to 
"[gnu-cobol]" would help, but I would like something a few bytes shorter, 
like "gnubol]".

There's been so much posting to this list, I'm consolidating everything 
into one message:

At 09:34 PM 10/27/99 , Chad Slaughter wrote:
>Boris Kortiak wrote :>
> >I don't think screens are part of the 85 standard, are they?  Would be a 
> VERY useful extension.
>
>the screen manipulation isnt part of the ansi 85, but it is part of
>the X/OPen cobol standard..whcih we flirted with implementing along with
>ansi 85, as they are mostly identical. X/Open is also geared towards unix
>so we were going to use it as a reference as well.

The screen section is in COBOL-20XX.  The current draft is available at 
<http://www.ncits.org/tc_home/j4htm/cd17all.pdf>.  I recommend you get 
AcroReader 4.0.  I've had problems with some J4 docs with earlier AcroReaders.

At 12:22 PM 10/28/99 , Christopher Clark wrote:
>     Vendors usually add custom GUI code, but the ones I've looked at acted as
>though the GUI screen was 80 fixed-width columns by 24 rows, and used the same
>Screen Section as the character interface.  Now I don't want to go off on 
>a rant
>about this...  :-)

Sadly, the Screen handling which is being added to COBOL-20XX, is a pre-GUI 
interface.  It already exists in several compilers, but by the time this 
standard ships, the Screen handling will be 20 years obsolete.

At 07:27 AM 10/28/99 , Bernard Giroud wrote:
>Randall Bart wrote :>
> >> > >     edit <value> <pic> [-b] [-s[l|t][s]]
> >     `edit 123.45 $$$,$$$.99`
> >     "   $123.45"
>I think this is a great idea, but it should be implemented thru a subroutine
>or a function which should be part of the runtime system, mainly for
>performance reason.

Both interfaces should be available.  I was addressing the needs of the 
Perl back end which precipitated this thread.  The interface I described 
could call subroutine you described.

At 10:19 AM 10/28/99 , Davyd Ondrejko wrote:
>         15  MY-VAR1         COMP SYNC   PIC 999..
>would be valid, but
>        15  MY-VAR1         PIC 999.   COMP SYNC.
>would not be.  Why would you want to do that?  I don't know, but them's
>the rules.

The problem with the latter is that a period followed by a space is a 
separator period.  The J4 sanctioned way to end a PIC with period or comma 
is to turn your clauses around:

         15 MY-VAR1 COMP SYNC PIC 999..
         15 MY-VAR2 COMP SYNC PIC 999,.

Most (but not all) compilers allow a comma to end a PIC:

         15 MY-VAR1 PIC 999.,  COMP SYNC.
         15 MY-VAR2 PIC 999,,  COMP SYNC.

Ideally, Gnubol should allow but flag this use of comma.  It usually just 
flows this way out of the scanner, and you don't even realize you've 
implemented it.  Trailing period in PIC is rare, and comma is rarer still, 
but after tens of millions of programmer years of Cobol coding there are 
millions of really weird edit pictures.

At 10:21 AM 10/28/99 , Boris Kortiak wrote:
> > In practice this is indeed editing at the time the field is filled with
> > data (coming to this with 29 years experience of Cobol).
>
>Umm ... well ... yes and no.  The actual editing -- and thus the errors
>-- can happen when you try to *use* the variable.  If you have a numeric

Let's get our language straightened out.  Boris is using a different sense 
of the word "editing".  The editing we're talking about is picture 
editing.  The sense Boris is using is exception detection or validation.
--
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