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[lal]

HI Friends,
I am working with Cobol CICS application program and I have a following linkage section records.
01 AMAC-AREA-A
01 AMAC-CONTROL-A

In the procedure division we are accessing these records like
SET ADDRESS OF AMAC-AREA-A TO
TATA-LIST-PNTR.

where TATA-LIST-PNTR is a working storage pointer.

EXEC CICS GETMAIN
SET(ADDRESS OF AMAC-CONTROL-A)
FLENGTH(A-FLENGTH)
END-EXEC.

Could anybody explain me why we are doing like this??. Thanx in advance friends.

[kolusu]

Lal,

check this link for a detailed explanation on GETMAIN.

http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DFHCAP44/1.93?DT=19990319212537

And you also might be interested in explanation of FREEMAIN.

http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DFHCAP44/1.78?DT=19990319212537

Hope this helps...

cheers

kolusu
_________________
Kolusu
www.linkedin.com/in/kolusu

[vihv]

I read the manual, and still dont understand:
EXEC CICS,GETMAIN,
SET (ADDRESS OF LOGMSG1-INTERFACE-AREA)
LENGTH (WS-MESSAGE-LENGTH)
END-EXEC

is it going to return a pointer to a "empty" area, or is it going to return an area initialized with the values of LOGMSG1-INTERFACE-AREA. now, the pointer is it returned in the LOGMSG1-INTERFACE-AREA variable.....??


Thanks

[kolusu]

vihv,

Check this link for a detailed explanation of pointer.

http://home.swbell.net/mck9/cobol/tech/cobolptr.html

Hope this helps...

Cheers

kolusu
_________________
Kolusu
www.linkedin.com/in/kolusu

[blitz2]

Kolusu, that is a very useful link.

vihv, I see the answers to your question from the 'getmain' link that Kolusu provided earlier.

If you are familiar with C pointers, then the Cobol pointers are a cakewalk... The way I see it, Cobol pointers are (void *) equivalents of C pointers.

Now a small challenge question for beginners... How do you increment a Cobol pointer to point to the next memory location? and what about 2, 3, 4 increments?
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[vihv]

You right...I was just a little confused.....

about How do you increment a Cobol pointer to point to the next memory location? and what about 2, 3, 4 increments?

EXEC CICS RETRIEVE
SET (ADDRESS OF VCMP-CONTROL-AREA)
LENGTH (WS-RETRIEVE-LENGTH)
END-EXEC

SET WS-RET-POINTER TO ADDRESS OF VCMP-CONTROL-AREA
MOVE LENGTH OF VCMP-CNTL-ADDRESS-AREA TO WS-CNTL-LENGTH
ADD WS-RETRIEVE-LENGTH WS-CNTL-LENGTH
GIVING WS-GETMAIN-LENGTH

[blitz2]

your pointer value (WS-RET-POINTER) hasn't changed!.. Question was on pointer arithmetic.
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