[Info-vax] Calling $CREPRC in COBOL

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 6/10/2022 1:39 PM, VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>    10  ENQ-TYPE      PIC X(1)  VALUE EXTERNAL PQL$_ENQLM.
> ..............^
> %COBOL-E-EXTREFVAL, VALUE EXTERNAL clause ignored - valid only on COMP
> data-item
> 
> How do you put PQL$ items in to a COBOL "byte"?

Disclaimer: I don't do Cobol.

As I read the fine manual then VMS Cobol only have
16, 32 and 64 bit binary integers.

So one has to cheat.

Here is my suggestion for cheating:

$ type pack.cob
identification division.
program-id.pack.
*
data division.
working-storage section.
01 packrec.
    03 b1 pic x.
    03 lw1 pic s9(9) comp.
    03 b2 pic x.
    03 lw2 pic s9(9) comp.
*
procedure division.
main-paragraph.
     move function char(11 + 1) to b1
     move 22 to lw1
     move function char (33 + 1) to b2
     move 44 to lw2
     call "dump" using
         by reference packrec
         by value 10
     end-call
     stop run.
$ type packsup.c
#include <stdio.h>

void dump(char *b, int len)
{
     int i;
     for(i = 0; i < len; i++)
     {
         printf(" %d", b[i]);
     }
     printf("\n");
}

$ cob pack
$ cc packsup
$ link pack + packsup
$ run pack
  11 22 0 0 0 33 44 0 0 0

The code should be pretty self explanatory.

And you will of course need to move from one variable
with external to the single byte text variable.

Arne