Well, Enterprise COBOL V6.x now has functions BIT-OF and BIT-TO-CHAR, so COBOL
programmers DO have SOME bit manipulation capabilities, though they are a
little crude.
Example:
01 FUNC-COMMAREA.
05 FUNC-LENGTH PIC S9(4) COMP-5.
05 FUNC-FLAGS REDEFINES FUNC-LENGTH PIC X(2).
05 FUNC-OTHER-DATA PIC X(whatever).
MOVE FUNCTION BIT-TO-CHAR (‘1010101001010101’) TO FUNC-FLAGS.
Obviously it would be nicer to be able to define actual BIT-level flags in the
redefine of the length field, but it is not impossible to set this up to work
from COBOL to your subroutine.
Peter
From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <[email protected]> On Behalf
Of David Clark
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2026 11:03 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [External Sender] Re: Maintaining Backward Compatibility
>> Or - better - ask marketing for *their* solution...
Ha! I like that one.
>> Can you restrict the scripting request code to 7 bits?
It would have to be 6 bits -- the leftmost bit is reserved for the sign and
the right-most bit of the top byte is reserved for a length of exactly 256
(b'10000'). But, 6 bits do give me 63 combinations. So, yes, I could
create flags for 16 possible request codes and the 8 possible return codes
out of that. However, this subroutine was originally intended to help
COBOL programmers perform string functions not directly supported by
COBOL. A calling COBOL program would have a difficult time setting those
request codes and checking those return codes.
>> Or - if not - can you add a flag at the end to delineate the new format.
Now you're talking about creating a separate 260-byte work area to
transform the scripting parameter layout into a 3rd layout that would more
easily support both runtime modes. If this subroutine were only going to
be used in batch, then I could dynamically allocate that storage and be "in
like Flynn", as it were. But I don't think I should do the same in a CICS
partition.
Sincerely,
Dave Clark
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On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 10:39 AM Alan Atkinson <mailto:[email protected]>
wrote:
> If you have a halfword for a 256 byte string you have 8 flags for new
> formats in the top byte.
> Can you restrict the scripting request code to 7 bits?
>
> Or - if not - can you add a flag at the end to delineate the new format.
>
> Or - better - ask marketing for *their* solution...
>
> On 2/13/26, 10:32 AM, "IBM Mainframe Assembler List on behalf of David
> Clark" <[email protected] <mailto:
> mailto:[email protected]> on behalf of
> mailto:[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
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