New syntax

The COBOL syntax supported by isCOBOL contains some interesting extensions introduced by the ANSI 2002 standard. With isCOBOL, programmers can take advantage of:

•	Variable length alphanumeric items.

77 my-var PIC X ANY LENGTH.

•	Dynamic occurs.

01 my-table OCCURS DYNAMIC CAPACITY num-items.   03 my-item1 PIC X(10).   03 my-item2 PIC 9(5).

•	The ability to measure the length of a string into PIC X items with one single statement.

INSPECT my-var TALLYING var-length FOR CHARACTERS BEFORE INITIAL TRAILING SPACE.

•	The ability to interact with Java objects and create new objects using the proper syntax.

SET the-result TO my-object:>my-method ( parameter-1, parameter-2 )

•	The new statement ASSERT to raise exception if the assertion is false when executing with the -ea Java option. This is particularly useful for debugging purpose as in Visual C and Java languages. Code example:

ASSERT (var1 = 1 or var2 = 2)       otherwise "Exception message to raise, " VAR1, VAR2.