COBOL Manual for TNS/E Programs (H06.03+)

Program Execution
HP COBOL Manual for TNS/E Programs—520347-003
12-4
ASSIGN Command
ASSIGN Command
This section applies to programs that were not compiled with the ENV LIBRARY or UL
directive. Programs compiled with the ENV LIBRARY or UL directive ignore ASSIGN
commands.
The ASSIGN command creates an ASSIGN message in your current run-time
environment. A process can use the information in an ASSIGN message to override
the file-system file name, or other attributes, of a file specified in the source program.
This command is fully discussed in the TACL Reference Manual.
When a process begins to execute, it can request its ASSIGN messages and use their
contents to modify the information it possesses about its files before opening them.
During the initialization of any process compiled from a COBOL source, the run-time
routines automatically handle any ASSIGN messages made available by the Guardian
environment.
This partial syntax diagram of the ASSIGN command describes features of greatest
interest to the COBOL programmer:
program-name
is the program-name in the PROGRAM-ID paragraph in the Identification
Division, for which the file assignment is to take effect. This is distinct from the
name of the loadfile. Do not specify program-name for an external file.
*
means that the file assignment applies to all programs in the loadfile. You must not
specify * for an external file.
If neither program-name nor * is present, then cobol-file-name must be
unique among all programs in the loadfile.
Note. ASSIGN commands for files in a DLL are ignored.
ASSIGN
program-name
*
,
system-file
,
characteristic
.
cobol-file-name
VST334.vsd