Enhancements

RM/COBOL version 10.0 for Windows and UNIX contains enhancements to both the runtime system and the compiler.

General Features

• For RM/COBOL version 10 on Windows, the COM servers for the compiler and runtime automatically and silently register themselves when necessary if the user has the required permissions to accomplish the registration. This eliminates "class not registered" errors that may occur when the Windows registry is damaged. Automatic registration is also helpful when client machines access the compiler or runtime from a network share and thus have not registered the COM servers on the client machine as part of an install on the client.

• In version 10, the RM/COBOL-to-Btrieve Adapter Program is provided to support Btrieve access on Linux operating systems.

New Runtime Features

• The main program argument in version 10 has been increased in size from a maximum of 100 characters to a maximum of 2048 characters.

• The SYSTEM library routine in version 10 has been enhanced on Windows NT-class operating systems to allow a command-line string of up to 4096 characters in length.

• The C$CARG and C$DARG library routines have been enhanced in version 10 to optionally return a pointer to the requested actual argument data item and a pointer to the encoded PICTURE editing string for a requested actual argument data item that is an edited data item. Also, the C$PARG library routine has been added in version 10 to obtain a pointer to the nth actual argument data item when other attributes are not required. These changes allow treating the argument list almost like an array and also access to arguments not specified in the Procedure Division header.

• Runtime error messages in version 10 have been enhanced to better handle long pathnames, which occur more commonly now than they did in the past.

• The runtime system in version 10 has been enhanced with support for object version 13, which allows elements greater than 64K in length subject to an OCCURS clause.

New Compiler Features

• The RM/COBOL language in version 10 has relaxed some of the limits from prior versions of RM/COBOL:

  • A data element subject to an OCCURS clause is not limited to 65280 characters in length.

  • The fixed-size header of a variable-size group, that is, a group that contains a data item described with the DEPENDING ON phrase of the OCCURS clause, is not limited to 65280 characters in length.

  • The total size of distinct literals specified in a single program segment is not limited to 65535 characters.

  In each of these cases, the limit is now subject only to the 4GB limit addressable in a 32-bit computer when the entire memory needs of the program are considered collectively.

   

• The RM/COBOL language in version 10 has the AT line-column positioning extension to the ACCEPT and DISPLAY statements for compatibility with syntax features common in other COBOL dialects.

• The RM/COBOL compiler in version 10 has been enhanced to warn when an external name is longer than 30 characters in length and will therefore be truncated from the 240 character-length generally allowed for names in RM/COBOL.

• The RM/COBOL compiler in version 10 has been fixed to correct a problem of ignoring the first COPY statement in a file copied using a COPY statement that specifies the REPLACING phrase.

New CodeBridge Features

• The CodeBridge Library in version 10 was enhanced to eliminate some 16-bit limits inherent in its coding. The version 10 CodeBridge ® Library is built into the version 10 RM/COBOL runtime system and these limits are relaxed in the version 10 runtime. The limits were, for the most part, closely correlated with existing limits for the OCCURS clause in versions 9 and earlier of RM/COBOL. The CodeBridge ® Library needed to conform to the removal of such limits in the version 10 runtime system.

• The rtcallbk.h file, used with CodeBridge ® during support module compilation, was enhanced in version 10 to properly export the entry points of a module built with CodeBridge Builder for Windows. This eliminates a need for using definitions (.def) files on Windows.

• A GetTerminationInfo library function has been added so that non-COBOL programs can obtain information about why a program is terminating.

New CodeWatch Features

• The CodeWatch source code editor in version 10 has the ability to show and hide COPY files.

• The CodeWatch animation window in version 10 allows double-clicking in the rightmost column to set or clear any breakpoints on a line.

• The CodeWatch File menu in version 10 contains options to print all or a selected portion of the current source.

• CodeWatch version 10 tabbed edit windows displays a tab containing the name of each open file or window at the bottom of the document area.

• CodeWatch version 10 can load large projects and save large source files much faster than previous versions.

• CodeWatch version 10 has fixes for numerous minor problems.

New XML Extensions Features

• XML Extensions now supports object version 13 and all future object versions that do not change the object symbol table version.

• Version 10 contains numerous bug fixes, primarily related to Xcentrisity Business Information Server (BIS)