"Atwood, Tim (DVM)" <[log in to unmask]> wrote in message
news:z72cneURJaJLhyGjXTWcqQ@fidnet.com...
[snip]
> Before I go that route I need to find the same old communicators you
looked
> at and see what this is supposed to do. I am also a little concerned about
> using non-standard tricks like this because they will be the first to
break
> on new OS versions and/or with an emulator (if one is ever created).

I don't think I'd characterize this as a "non-standard trick."

The Shared Globals enhancement was released in MPE/iX 5.0.  It is
extensively documented in the Technical Articles section of the 5.0
Communicator.

While it did address a major problem with putting C/iX functions in XLs, the
enhancement was not just for C and not just for POSIX/iX.

> I think I have decided it is safer to go the dumb brute force route. Not
put
> the file updates in the XL subroutine. Instead just put the file stuff
into
> each program. Harder to maintain. But it is easier to find a junior
> programmer who can do repeated maintenance on code in each of several
> programs than it is to find a senior technical software engineer to fix
> shared POSIX globals in a COBOL subroutine.

Just speaking for myself, I don't see this as something that's likely to
break in a future release.  But staying with a simpler solution has its
advantages, especially if you contemplate porting to a different platform or
a different COBOL compiler.

Walter
No longer speaking for HP

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