Re: [open-cobol-list] [open-Cobol-list] ENTRY statement: obsolete?

[john Culleton]

On Sun, 24 Aug 2014 10:09:59 -0500
"William M Klein" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Right after I sent my note, I realized I was
> wrong. The ENTER statement was designated as
> OBSOLETE in the '85 Standard. I don't think the
> ENTRY statement was Standard (at least after
> the '68 Standard). My explanation of what
> OBSOLETE means is correct as is my technique
> for avoiding it a "structure" and "conforming "
> program. However, it was ENTER not ENTRY that
> was made OBSOLETE in '85.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William M Klein
> [mailto:address@hidden Sent: Sunday,
> August 24, 2014 9:59 AM To: Brian Tiffin;
> address@hidden Subject:
> RE: [open-Cobol-list] ENTRY statement: obsolete?
> 
>               I think it would be useful to
> have an explanation of what "OBSOLETE" means.
> 
> This is an ANSI/ISO Standard term with a
> specific meaning.  It means that it will be
> removed from the next official Standard. The
> "ENTRY" statement was designated as obsolete in
> the '85 Standard and was removed from the '02
> Standard (and is still gone in the '14
> Standard).
> 
> There is a requirement that a conforming
> implementation provide a flagging mechanism to
> identify any obsolete feature used in a
> program. I don't know if OC usually run '85
> NIST OBSOLETE tests, but they do exist.
> 
> There is no requirement that a conforming
> implementation  ever remove this features,
> however there is no expectation that they are
> portable to other conforming implementations.
> 
> The "expected" technique that you can use
> without ENTRY is to start your program with an
> EVALUATE statement that does a CALL to nested
> program depending on the function that you
> want.  You can then use a nested program with
> the COMMON attribute for functions that are
> needed by multiple nested programs. The OMITTED
> keyword can be used if you have a different
> number of parameters for different functions.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Tiffin [mailto:address@hidden 
> Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2014 12:22 AM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [open-cobol-list] ENTRY statement:
> obsolete?
> 
> Scott McKellar wrote:
> > What does it mean that the FAQ labels the
> > ENTRY statement as obsolete (or
> any other statement for that matter)?
> >
> > Does it mean "Don't use it because it's
> > likely to go away?"  Or does it
> just mean "Don't use it because it's
> unfashionable and I don't like it?"
> >
> > I ask because I'm writing a new subprogram
> > using ENTRY.  It encapsulates a
> complex data structure, with a separate entry
> point for each supported operation.
> >
> >
> > If ENTRY is going away, I can write the
> > program differently.  However no
> alternative that I can think of is very
> appealing, except perhaps to rewrite it in C.
> ENTRY does exactly what I want.
> >
> > If ENTRY will continue to be available, I'll
> > use it, and shrug off the
> sneers.
> >
> > Scott McKellar
> 
> Scott.  In my opinion, use it and shrug.  ENTRY
> is not even mentioned in COBOL 2014, but is one
> handy statement.  I've reworded the FAQ.  The
> default.conf configuration has it listed as
> 'obsolete', mf.conf as 'ok'.  It'll be
> supported in GNU Cobol for some time to come.
> 
> Opinion. But I'll rail against any change that
> threatens the feature. It's too handy, and
> makes for nice concise code blocks with a
> shared data space.
> 
> Cheers,
> Brian
> >
> >
> >
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Never used ENTRY. But my question is, why was it
obsoleted?

-- 
John Culleton
Wexford Press
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