Re: [GNU-COBOL] instant top-level parser

[Fred Mobach <fred@mobach.nl>]

"David L. Nicol" wrote:

> Randall Bart wrote:
> > COBOL-20XX has done away with margin B, so all recognition of headers is
> > driven on separator-periods alone.  The ZIF should be parsed into a next
> > intermediate form (NIF)  period delimited sentences.  Then the next
> > intermediate form is to parse this into programs, divisions, sections, and
> > paragraphs.  This form would identify the nesting of programs so we call
> > this the nested intermediate form (NIF).
>
> "separator periods" are periods followed by whitespace, except
> for single periods in PIC clauses which can be replaced with Vs by
> the programmer for identical functionality, correct? So the first
> period on a line after the letters PIC can be changed into a V?

A small complication : this is only valid in picture strings for numeric
variables. An alphanumeric example could be :
01 ANY-VARIABLE PIC X(05) VALUE ". . .".


> Question -- Were separator periods optional in the
> margin B days, or was the blocking redundant that way?

No, they were NOT optional.

Regards,

Fred Mobach



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