Various IBM extensions (was RE: gnubol: Re: FW: RCF - SC26-9046-03 - LRM (Special-Names format error)

["William M. Klein" <wmklein@ix.netcom.com>]

In reply to various parts of the post

1) The (current) IBM documentation has the following (in blue - indicating
that it is an IBM extension),
 "Note:  The clauses in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph can appear in any order."

I believe several other compilers have that same extension, but won't swear
to it.  (It can't EASILY be shown in a diagram because there is no easy way
to "show" a change in order of clauses as an extension - and the ANSI
Standard requires that to be a CONFORMING IMPLEMENTATION you not only FLAG
but also DOCUMENT extensions.)

2) If we are getting into "interesting" examples of what the older (currently
unsupported) OS/VS COBOL compiler supports, besides
   > THEN
it also supports
   = TO
Actually, one of my favorite (and this actually impacts semantics is
   SORT ...
     INPUT PROCEDURE
              nn TIMES
     OUTPUT PROCEDURE
          VARYING ....

(Having written a published book on "OldBOL to NewBOL: an IBM Migration
Tutorial" - I spent much of the book dealing with undocumented and unexpected
"extensions" in OS/VS COBOL.)

3) Even the newest IBM compilers support
   RECORDS IS/RECORD ARE
 and several other IS/ARE interchanges that are not Standard

NOTE: the revision will make most (all?) of this conforming.

Bill Klein
  wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com

> -----Original Message-----
  <snip>
>  The more serious
> error in that diagram is that the ordering of the clauses is immaterial.
> Im not sure whether this is in the standard, but its in the products
> i know.
  <snip>
>
> some people write NOT IS on locations where IS NOT is assumed.  OS/VS COBOL
> removes IS inthe lexical phase, so no worries there, but as soon as his is
> migrated to MF COBOL the code breaks down.
>
> as a side remark on non native speakers and interaction with
> preprocessors: GREATER THEN is often used in COBOL programs. reason
> that this parses: THEN is lexxed out.  THAN is optional, so it parses.
> What about that?


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