Summary of changes

This section lists the major changes that have been made to this information. The changes have an associated cross-reference for your convenience. The changes with respect to COBOL for AIX Version 3 (both technical changes and editorial changes to terminology) are marked by a vertical bar (|) in the left margin in the PDF version.

Version 4.1 (September 2010)

  • The components of the ASSIGN clause have been clarified, and associated examples have been added (ASSIGN clause).
  • The information about reference format has been updated to reflect that:
    • Source text can optionally vary in length from 0 to 252 bytes (extended source format) or end at column 72 (fixed source format) as in earlier versions of IBM COBOL for AIX (Reference format).
    • A new floating comment indicator (the character string '*>') can be coded in either fixed or extended source format to indicate that the ensuing text on a line is an inline comment. (Floating comment indicator (*>)).
  • The following information about file concatenation has been added:
    • Multiple input files can be concatenated by separating the file identifiers with a colon (:). Concatenation is supported in all of the IBM COBOL for AIX file systems (File concatenation).
    • File status key 33 is a new error condition (File status key).
  • Information about the source conversion utility, scu, has been added. scu helps you normalize non-IBM COBOL source and free-format COBOL source so that it can be compiled by IBM COBOL for AIX (Source conversion utility (scu)).
  • File input-output limitations have been updated for the new DB2® file system (File input-output limitations).
  • Several sections have been updated to reflect that the underscore character (_) is supported in user-defined words such as data-names and program-names. Underscores are also supported in the literal form of program-names.

The following terminology change was also made in this release: VSAM as a generic reference to either the SdU (SMARTdata Utilities) or Encina SFS (Structured File Server) file system has been replaced with the more precise terms SdU or SFS where appropriate.