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[ramkey]

Hi All,

May I know what is the significance of having a single Level 1 variables in the working storage section over, having more number of Level 1 variables.

Please come up with ur views.

Thanks,
Ramakrishnan

[Ravi]

CASE 1
01 my-var1 ...
01 my-var2 ...

CASE 2
01 variables,
05 my-var1 ...
05 my-var2 ...

In the second case I can initialize both my-var 1 & 2 at a time using INITIALIZE variables statement. Thats one advantage am seeing in CASE 2.

[German Castillo]

Other Than cosmetics, and the already pointed out advantage, regarding initialization, there is no other advantage.

From a COBOL internal point of view each variable is allocated one after the other, aligning, and maybe formatting them where they should be, some compiling options can twist this behavior somehow. The compiler do not pay any attention to levels at this point, even more it generates at compile time what is know as a 'normalized' level from all the levels it founds on its passes through the source code

On the other hand from an application proggrammer point of view, it makes sense to GROUP variables according to their usage, context or whatever happens to be the reason the analist comes up with.

A word of caution here ... Some 'levels' have a particular usage already defined, for example, Levels 88, levels 66 AND level 77, regarding L 77, they may not be used as grouping levels. some of the others, including L 88 may be part of other group levels
_________________
Best wishes,

German Castillo

[neilxt]