COBOL Manual for TNS and TNS/R Programs

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1251

Calling Other Programs and Routines

HP COBOL Manual for TNS and TNS/R Programs—522555-006

23-9

X/Open CALL Statement

If an HP COBOL program is compiled with the PORT directive and runs in the CRE, it

can call non-COBOL routines with the CALL statement, which behaves like an X/Open

CALL statement.

If the called program is a function and it was compiled either by the COBOL85 compiler

with the ENV COMMON directive or by the NMCOBOL compiler, the X/Open CALL

statement returns its value in the special register RETURN-CODE. For more

information, see Special Register RETURN-CODE.

Functions (Routines That Return Values)

A function is a routine that returns a value to the calling program. COBOL has no

mechanism for returning a function’s value to the calling program, but HP COBOL has

two:

•

GIVING Phrase

•

Special Register RETURN-CODE

GIVING Phrase

The GIVING phrase allows you to specify a data item, return-value, to hold the

value that the function returns. The storage operation is performed after any necessary

scaling and follows the rules for an elementary MOVE TO statement (for these rules,

see MOVE TO).

Special Register RETURN-CODE

The special register RETURN-CODE is accessible to an HP COBOL program that was

compiled with the PORT directive and uses the X/Open CALL statement to call a

function if either:

•

The HP COBOL program and the function are TNS programs that run in the CRE,

and the HP COBOL program was compiled with the ENV COMMON directive (not

the LIBRARY directive).

•

The HP COBOL program and the function are native programs.

The value of the function is returned in the special register RETURN-CODE, whose

description is:

01 RETURN-CODE EXTERNAL PICTURE S9(5) COMPUTATIONAL.

If the value of the function is greater than 99,999, arithmetic overflow occurs.

Caution. If a program compiled with the PORT directive calls a program not compiled with the

PORT directive, differences in the way BINARY/COMPUTATIONAL/COMP data items are

aligned in the two programs can cause data to be misread.