Re: [Tiny-cobol-users] A problem with EVALUATE

[John R. C. <jo...@we...>]

On Friday 19 August 2005 07:50 am, Jim Morcombe wrote:
> Here is another cut down listing.
>
> It demonstrates what I believe to be a bug in the compiler concerning
> the EVALUATE statement.
>
> When I compile it, I get the following error message:
>
> jim.cbl:    18: error: incompatible selection object, on or before '='
>
> Jim
>
>                       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
>       2 000300 PROGRAM-ID.              rgmssch.
>       3 001200 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
>       4 001700
>       5 001900 DATA DIVISION.
>       6 002100 FILE SECTION.
>       7 002300
>       8 002500 WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
>       9
>      10        01  LICENCE-DAYS              PIC 9(5).
>      11
>      12
>      13
>      14 019500 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
>      15 020200 MAINLINE.
>      16
>      17            EVALUATE TRUE
>      18                WHEN LICENCE-DAYS = ZERO
>      19                     CONTINUE
>      20            END-EVALUATE.


I am not familiar with such a construct. According to the books
I have, (three at the moment) you EVALUATE FIELDNAME.

And then the following  WHEN statements are equivalent to
IF FIELDNAME = (value) (executable statement) 
ELSE IF....

The EVALUATE TRUE statement in your program does not refer to a field name
but a condition-name. This in turn requires a level 88 appended
to a field name in e.g., WORKING STORAGE. 

CONTINUE is used in an IF statement. I have not found it used in
a EVALUATE statement.  

TRUE is not a field but a condition name attributed to a field
that has an 88 statement like:

        O1  WS-ANOTHER-RECORD PICTURE X.
            88 ANOTHER-RECORD VALUE "Y" FALSE "N".  

EVALUATE with WHEN statements is an alternative to the use of IF with 
condition
names. Don't mix the two.
-- 
John Culleton
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