TBH I had wondered about a terminology difference, but the fact that nobody else jumped in convinced me that I wasn't the only one going "Wow".
And unless COBOL is the only programming language you've ever seen, it seems unlikely that you wouldn't know what a variable is. On Fri, Feb 3, 2023 at 10:11 AM Hobart Spitz <orexx...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Feb 3, 2023 at 9:00 AM zMan <zedgarhoo...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > O my. > > > > I was on a call with a bunch of customers a few years ago. One of them > was > > having a very basic problem with a COBOL program calling our product. I > > explained that they needed to put the name of <something> into a variable > > that gets passed as the first parameter. Silence, then..."What's a > > variable?" > > > > COBOL, and its programmers, use the term "data name", almost exclusively, > instead of the term "variables". Why? Because "data name" includes file > definitions, structures, 77 levels, 88 levels, etc., none of which are > variables. > > Just because we know a lot of things that few others know, doesn't mean > that others don't know what they are talking about.. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
