Variable call list in COBOL CICS program

vabond · New User Joined: 15 Oct 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Oregon

Hello folks,
I have an Assembler CICS program that is called by multiple COBOL programs. I am trying to rewrite it in COBOL. The problem is that the various programs that call it pass a variable number of parms in the call.
I need to figure out how many parms were used to call this program.
I tried the ADDRESS OF with a comparison to nulls but it did not work.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Victor

dick scherrer · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:20 am

Hello Victor and welcome to the forum,

How does the assembler code detect the number of parms?

vabond · New User Joined: 15 Oct 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Oregon

The assembler program just counts the parms in the parm list until it finds the x'80' in the high order byte of the address.
Thanks

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:45 am

Victor,

You could set a WS POINTER to the ADDRESS OF each parm, redefining the POINTER as PIC X(04) and then test the high-order byte of the redefined POINTER for a value not less than X'80'.

I never tried this so this is a SWAG on my part....

Bill

vabond · New User Joined: 15 Oct 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Oregon

Bill,
Tried your suggestion. No go. In fact, I displayed the addresses for each and they all appeared to have addresses. Not sure what COBOL is doing. Here is what it looks like:

Program A:
CALL PROGRAM-C USING PARM-1, PARM-2, PARM-3.

Program B:
CALL PROGRAM-C USING PARM-1, PARM-2, PARM-3, PARM-4.

Program C:
PROCEDURE DIVISION USING PARM-1, PARM-2, PARM-3, PARM-4.

Program C needs to be able to determine if it was called with 3 or 4 parms.
Thanks again.

dick scherrer · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:12 am

Hello,

Maybe this would be a stop-gap until a better solution presents itself.

Write a new little "filter" in assembler that always calls the cobol replacement module with 4 parameters. Keep the current logic to check for "last parm" and when this filter calls the replacement code, it would place a constant value in the unused parm(s) (i.e. "NONE", or x'FF', or whatever).

This would allow the cobol replacement of the business functionality quickly.

FWIW. . .

Robert Sample · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 5:45 pm

The COBOL Application Programming Guide says this:

dbzTHEdinosauer · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:09 pm

1. Program-C can not be a CICS module
(i.e. a module that invokes CICS APIs),
since Program-C is invoked via a COBOL CALL.

2. The COBOL compiler generates the necessary register population (the CALL)
and the code to provide addressability for linkage section entries (USING ).

3. Program-C's compiler generated code will always provide addressability to all four parms.

4. Program-C's address for parm-4 will be radically different for that of parm-3,
depending on if Program-C is CALLed from Program-A (3 parm CALL) or Program-B (4 parm CALL).

5. I don't think the OP wants to modify any Program-As or Program-Bs, so the OMIT is not to helpful.

don't have access to a mainframe until Monday, so I can not check anything out,
but, I believe what Bill suggested to do should have worked,
had his suggestion been implemented properly.

May not be the hex80,
as I can not remember if it is a simple 'move address'
or set register, move address that is generated by the compiler for the USING phrase.

But there should be an easy way to determine number of parms passed.
====================
If there are 3 or 4 parms, is there no code in parm-1,2,or 3 to indicate what is going on?

what actually does Program-C do?

I don't think the OP has a lot of experience.
OP mentioned that he had no idea what the COBOL code did for addressability.
That's not to tough since one only has to look at the object generated.

Robert Sample · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:44 pm

The last part of the manual I quoted said

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:53 pm

the fastest approach would be to have an assembler stub
to analyze the number of parameters passed
and call the cobol subroutine ( which has to be written yet , if I understand correctly)
with an augmented parameter list where the first parm is the number of the parms that follow