What's New in V3R6/V3R2?

The following list describes the enhancements made to ILE COBOL in V3R6 and V3R2:

• New EXIT PROGRAM phrase

  The AND CONTINUE RUN UNIT phrase has been added to the EXIT PROGRAM statement to allow exiting of a calling program without stopping the run unit.

• New SET statement pointer format

  A new format of the SET statement has been added that enables you to update pointer references.

• DBCS Data Support

  You can now process Double Byte Character Set (DBCS) data in ILE COBOL. The ILE COBOL compiler supports DBCS, in which each logical character is represented by two bytes. DBCS provides support for ideographic languages, such as the IBM® Japanese Graphic Character Set, Kanji.

• Support for CALL…BY VALUE and CALL…RETURNING

  CALL…BY VALUE and CALL…RETURNING gives you the ability to pass arguments BY VALUE instead of BY REFERENCE and receive RETURN values. This allows for greater ease of migration, and improved interlanguage support as ILE C for IBM i and ILE RPG for IBM i both support CALL… BY VALUE and CALL…RETURNING.

• Support of the BY VALUE and RETURNING phrases of the PROCEDURE DIVISION Header

  The BY VALUE phrase of the PROCEDURE DIVISION header allows COBOL to receive BY VALUE arguments from a calling COBOL program or other ILE language such as RPG, C, or C++. The RETURNING phrase of the PROCEDURE DIVISION header allows COBOL to return a VALUE to the calling ILE procedure.