Ed, You posted this comment on June 15, 2012: "Somewhere around the mid 1990's IBM seem to have done a reverse and either stop issuing manuals (eg COBOL MESSAGES AND CODES) or made them so complicated to read (COBOL conversion guide) it takes a lawyer to understand them"
Tom Ross posted this on June 17, 2012: "I know there is no reaching cranky Ed, but for others I can help: The issue of COBOL compiler messages was discussed here, and most agreed it would not be that helpful, since it would mostly say 'please see the COBOL Language Reference Manual'." I believe Tom was saying that there has never been a COBOL Messages and Codes manual. I'm not sure why you think otherwise. Can you locate one? My shop generally doesn't delete old manuals and we can't find one... In response to various comments about the lack of a manual over the years, Bill Klein reported back in 2005 that he had started an "annotated" list of COBOL error messages. It was incomplete, and I guess will remain so. It's probably not real important, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence to support your claim that IBM "finally" published a COBOL M&C manual. Regards, Greg Shirey Ben E. Keith Company -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Gould Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2016 9:24 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Enterprise COBOL V6 documentation available On Mar 22, 2016, at 1:47 AM, Bill Woodger wrote: > Ed, > > Are you seriously saying that for an applications language the > messages have to be able to be understood by someone with no knowledge > of the language, to someone who should know the language but doesn't > understand the message? Like I said the message that was put out had no relation to the issue. Too many FD's is a reasonable solution. The message didn't even message the were too many FD's. The programmers (in General) seemed to have a similar issue with many of the messages. Each time I got a phone call which should have been short turned into a 30 minute phone call which made me call IBM even asking other sysprogs before doing so. IBM wasted countless hours on each message I called in on. I hated it as did IBM trying to explain messages. IBM *FINALLY* put out a M&C after 5-7 years of requesting one so even they got the hint. The penny counters at IBM must be having a ball. Ed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
