Configuration

The behavior of Compiler, Runtime Framework and utilities can be customized with properties defined in a configuration file, that contains a list of properties consisting of the name of the property and its value, separated by an equals symbol (=), a colon (:) or a space:

Property=Value Property:Value Property Value

Property may contain the following characters only: lower-case letters (unless specified otherwise in this document), digits, periods and underscores to separate words Spaces, hyphens and any other characters are not allowed. The prefix "iscobol." is mandatory for any property, unless they’re set as system environment variables.

Value is left trimmed. Trailing spaces are kept but leading spaces are removed. If you need to keep leading spaces as well, then start with a “\” (backslash).

The backslash character can be used to

•	preserve leading spaces in the property value, e.g.

myproperty=\ this is the value

•	split the property value on multiple lines, e.g.

myproperty=this \            is \            the \            value

•	escape characters, e.g.

myproperty=C:\\folder1\\folder2

Common escape sequences:

Escape sequence	Meaning
\\	backslash
\f	form feed (0x0C)
\n	line feed (0x0A)
\r	carriage return (0x0D)
\u####	unicode representation (#### are the hex representation of the digit in UTF-16 BE encoding)

The property value can include delimited free text (comment) or Java properties values. See iscobol.conf.var_delimiters for more details.

Unless iscobol.conf.only is set (or the corresponding command line option -conly is used, where applicable), isCOBOL can use several configurations at the same time. They are loaded in the following order, and the properties they contain are set in the order in which they appear in the respective files:

1.	system environment variables

Note - isCOBOL only looks for system environment variables whose name is in upper case. This is not a problem on case insensitive systems like Windows. On case sensitive systems like Linux, instead, the system environment variable will not be found if its name is in lower or mixed case.

2.	/etc/iscobol.properties;

3.	iscobol.properties located in the user home directory;

4.	iscobol.properties located in the Java Classpath;

5.	-Discobol.conf=ownconfigurationfile or, where applicable, -c ownconfiguration file set at the command line;

6.	$ISCOBOL/iscobol.properties

7.	-Discobol.* (set at the command line).

8.	-Discobol.remote.conf=remoteconfigurationfile and -c remoteconfigurationfile (set at the client command line in Thin Client environment)

in addition to these configuration files, if iscobol.properties is located in a non-standard directory, you can also specify

-Discobol.conf=class_name

to indicate the proper location. In this example, iscobol.properties is loaded in the same directory as class_name.

You may also use a configuration file located on a web site by specifying:

-Discobol.conf=http://www.veryant.com/iscobol.properties

When a property is set more than one time, the most recently set value is used. The properties appearing in the command line have the highest priority, overriding any other previously set value.

For boolean properties, only the first character is used. Therefore, a boolean property is True when its first character is "T", "t", "Y", "y", or a digit from "1" to "9". Any other value is False.

The value of a property can be retrieved in a COBOL program with the following statement:

ACCEPT PropertyValue FROM ENVIRONMENT "PropertyName"

The value of a property can be temporarily set, for the duration of the working session, with the following statement:

SET ENVIRONMENT "PropertyName" TO PropertyValue

PropertyName should not begin with "iscobol.". That prefix is automatically added by the Runtime.