Re: Problem Writing to CSV gnucobol-3.2-1

[Simon Sobisch]

Hi Andrew,

Am 16.11.2023 um 17:56 schrieb Andrew Zwieg:
> I recently updated from GNUCobol  gnu-cobol-2.0 (RockyLinux 8) to
> gnucobol-3.2-1.el9.x86_64 (AlmaLinux 9).

Congratulations!

> This code used to work on the  previous version i had compiled by
> hand, the 3.2.1 version is provided  by Alma/RedHat.
>
>
> cobc -x autorfc.broke.cob
> autorfc.broke.cob: in paragraph 'Append':
> autorfc.broke.cob:140: warning: inline PERFORM without imperative
> statement used [-Wdialect]
>    138 |                 OR
>    139 |        LastIndex = 1
>    140 >        END-PERFORM.
>    141 |
>    142 |         PERFORM VARYING FromIndex FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL
>
>
> Relevant Code Snippet (can provide more/all code if needed)
>
>
>       PERFORM VARYING LastIndex FROM 50 by -1 UNTIL
>         FromChar(LastIndex) NOT EQUAL SPACE
>                  OR
>         LastIndex = 1
>       END-PERFORM.

Note that this is only a warning, cobc still compiles that.

If I remember correctly only GnuCOBOL will compile that, COBOL requests
a statement in there, for example CONTINUE. Add that and you have
"compatible COBOL", which will also work with a previous version of
GnuCOBOL (and other compilers).

If you want to, you can also suppress this *along with every other
dialect related* warning using `-Wno-dialect`, but fixing is commonly
the better approach.

Note: If you are not restricted to not use functions, then FUNCTION TRIM
and/or FUNCTION STORED-CHAR-LENGTH may be quite useful and faster.

Kind regards,
Simon