[open-cobol-list] Question About Functions

[Robert Sherry]

    I am trying to add support for standard functions to the Open Source
COBOL Compiler and I have a question about the COBOL language. There are
several standardfunctions that take a variable number of arguments. These
include the function MAX. It is also my impressions that users can pass
expressions are arguments to function calls. If the user writes:
            FUNCTION MAX( 3 + 5 + 5 )
How does the compiler know how many arguments are being passed in?

    I am thinking that since commas are not used to separate arguments then
the compiler should not allow arithmetic expressions as arguments in
function calls.

Bob Sherry