1. What’s new in COBOL for z/OS since V4.2
Tom Ross
February 1, 2017

2. What’s new since V4.2? From V5.1:
COBOL 2002: Floating comment delimiter
*> to end of line is a comment
Raise WORKING-STORAGE section size limit to 2GB
(from 128MB)
Larger individual data items
Up to 999,999,999 bytes!
Support for UNBOUNDED tables
X OCCURS 1 To UNBOUNDED Depending on Y.
LINKAGE SECTION only
Improved interface with IBM Debug Tool
Easier management of debugging info

3. What’s new since V4.2? From V5.2:
Improved XML GENERATE
More powerful SUPPRESS capabilities
New VOLATILE attribute and SERVICE LABEL functionality
Enable OPT(1|2) compilation of User-Written condition handlers
>>CALLINTERFACE directive
Enables local control of dynamic, static, DLL calls
New features from 2002 COBOL Standard
Plus a list in the Language Reference Manual of which parts are supported

4. What’s new since V4.2? From V5.2:
New features from 2002 COBOL Standard:
Format 2 of SORT: the table SORT statement
Arranges table elements in a user-specified sequence
Can be used in CICS!
New formats of EXIT statement:
EXIT SECTION
EXIT PARAGRAPH
EXIT PERFORM
EXIT PERFORM CYCLE
Improved COPY REPLACING statement
LEADING and TRAILING phrases (better partial word replacement)
Nested COPY REPLACING now supported (IBM Extension)
Improved REPLACE statement

5. What’s new since V4.2? From V6.1:
Improved compiler capacity to allow compilation and optimization of very large COBOL programs
Very large means >400,000 lines
COBOL 2002: ALLOCATE and FREE statements
COBOL 2002: INITIALIZE … TO VALUE and more!
Re-set data items to initial value from VALUE clause!
JSON GENERATE statement
New and modified compiler options
COBOL 2002: VSAM "0x" file status code
For current cases that get FS=97
Improved memory requirements of TABLE SORT and performance improvements