IBM Mainframe Forum

Hello,

I'm in the process of converting some old OS VS COBOL programs to Enterprise COBOL and I found the below 'GO TO' statement without a procedure name following it.

Can someone please let me know where the control passed when the below GO TO is executed ?



I also found some ALTER statements when I looked for 060-BRANCH-STATEMENT.



I was able to get some resources online about the ALTER statement but I'm still not very clear about it.

Can someone please help me understand the above statements?

Thanks,
Ram Kumar

The GO TO statement is referred to as an altered GO TO. What is happening is that the ALTER statement sets the location for the GO TO statement in the paragraph. Yes, this is changing the GO TO during program execution. It causes great difficulty in maintenance since the paragraph can be executed three different times during one execution of the program and results in three different locations continuing the code after the paragraph name. I personally have only encountered ALTER / GO TO logic once in my career, and the person who was requested to maintain the program wound up rewriting it without the ALTER / GO TO logic as it took him several weeks of running tests to figure out how the program worked.

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ramkumar1992sp (Thu Aug 04, 2016 1:31 am)

Thanks Robert.
So this what I think its doing based on your answer and what I read here.Please correct me if I got it wrong.
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecen ... 395348.htm

The ALTER command sets the paragraph to be called when 090-BRANCH-STATEMENT Para is called.There is an another area in my program where this ALTER command was used on 090-BRANCH-STATEMENT


and then there was this


Now to rewrite this,I'm thinking of setting flags to true in both the places and then based on the flags using an EVALUATE in the 090-BRANCH-STATEMENT ,I would call either of those 2 procedures.

I will let you know how that goes.


Thanks,
Ram Kumar

Not flags,I would move some value to a variable and then evaluate that variable to make that call

Thanks,
Ram Kumar

EVALUATE is a good replacement for ALTER. However, this statement

The ALTER command sets the paragraph to be called when 090-BRANCH-STATEMENT Para is called

is not accurate. When control reaches 090-BRANH-STATEMENT -- be it from a PERFORM or a GO TO or even just falling through from the previous statement -- then the next statement to be executed will be the first statement in the paragraph currently active in the ALTER. If no ALTER statement has been executed for 090-BRANCH-STATEMENT, then the altered GO TO works as a CONTINUE statement and the next statement executed depends on how control reached 090-BRANCH-STATEMENT.

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ramkumar1992sp (Thu Aug 04, 2016 2:16 am)

Thanks Robert..