Paul Raulerson must have quoted from the Cobol manual:

"THE FORMAL FILE DESIGNATORS USED IN THIS COMMAND (COBTEXT, COBOBJ, COBLIST,
COBMAST, COBNEW, AND COBWKSP, COBXDB) CANNOT BE BACKREFERENCED AS ACTUAL
FILE DESIGNATORS IN THE COMMAND PARAMETER LIST. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION,
REFER TO THE IMPLICIT SUBENTRY OF THE FILE ENTRY IN THE HELP FACILITY."

True, you can't say FILE COBLIST;DEV=LP,1,1 but you can do:

:FILE PROGLIST;DEV=LP,1,1;CCTL
:COB85XLK SRC0010.SOURCE,PROG0010.TEST,*PROGLIST
    CPU TIME = 0:00:02.  WALL TIME = 0:00:04.

PAGE 0001  COBOL II/iX HP31500A.04.22  [85] Copyright Hewlett-Packard CO.
1987

:SHOWOUT

DEV/CL   DFID       JOBNUM  FNAME    STATE FRM SPACE RANK PRI #C
LP       #O448047   #S21    PROGLIST READY       6592    D 1   1
-----
However, be sure the first line of your source file (or at least that's
where I always put this compiler directive) has something like:

$CONTROL USLINIT,POST85,LIST

That "LIST" directive can also be "NOLIST" - just be sure it's LIST if you
want it, NOLIST if you don't or if you don't then direct the output to $null
as in the previous example.

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