Tips and Tricks for COBOL Development

Here are some tips and tricks for developing COBOL in the Eclipse IDE.

In this Chapter

Editing

Automatic buildingProject > Build automatically. With this set, whenever changes to a resource are saved, an incremental build starts, which rebuilds all the resources modified since the last build.
Background parsing Window > Preferences > Micro Focus COBOL > Editor > General > Background checking. With this set, the COBOL code is checked in the background, as you type it. Any errors are underlined with a red squiggly line.
Copybook expansion You can't expand copybooks inline. Instead, open a copybook in the editor as a file in its own right.
Collapse/expand and folding Click the plus and minus in the code to show and hide sections of the program, such as the File section, Linkage section and so on. You can hover over a collapsed section to show it expanded. To customize this, see Window > Preferences > Micro Focus COBOL > Editor > Folding.
Content assist and templatesPress ctrl space to insert a snippet of code for the statement you are typing. This gives an outline of the syntax for you to fill in the blanks. You can add more templates in Window > Preferences > Micro Focus COBOL > Editor > Templates.
Outline view The Outline view shows the structure of the program you are editing and enables you to navigate around it. To go to a Data Division item, a COBOL section or paragraph, just click on it in the Outline view. This view is populated when background checking is on)
PreferencesWindow > Preferences > Micro Focus COBOL > Editor.

Debugging

Breakpoint - setting Run > Toggle Breakpoint or double-click in the left margin.
Breakpoints viewShows the breakpoints marked in the current program. Double-click a breakpoint in this view to go to it in the code. The Breakpoints view is shown by default in the Debug perspective at the top right. You can show it by clicking Window > Show View > Breakpoints.
Data item valuesTo display a data item's value, you can hover over it, or alternatively right-click it and click Inspect. See also the Variables view below.
Debug See To debug a program
Debug view This view gives a dynamic view of all the threads. For each thread, this view shows the call/perform stack, showing where the current statement was called from or performed from, and where previous calls and performs came from. You can move the execution point, by right-clicking a thread and choosing an option from the menu. The Debug view is shown by default in the Debug perspective at the top left. You can show it by clicking Window > Show View > Debug.
Main program to debug Run > Debug . On the General tab, specify the main program file. To create a launch configuration
PreferencesWindow > Preferences > Micro Focus COBOL > Debug. Among other things, you can choose to display hexadecimal and byte values of data items.
Stop debugging Run > Terminate. You can also click the red square at the top. See To debug a program
Variables viewShows the data items in the previous and current statements, together with the data items' values. Changed items are highlit in yellow. The Variables view is shown by default in the Debug perspective at the top right. You can show it by clicking Window > Show View > Variables.

Projects and Building

Add files to a project File > Import. See To import existing files
Build automatically Project > Build automatically. With this set, whenever a resource changes, an incremental build starts and all resources modified since the last build are rebuilt.
Build settings and build types Project > Properties > Micro Focus COBOL > Build Configuration. You can create a configuration to represent each type of build, such as for debugging or for a specific platform. To configure and build a COBOL project
COBOL settingsProject > Properties > Micro Focus COBOL > Language settings. Use this to set the dialect, character set and directives for the whole project. You can override these for an individual file by right-clicking the file in the Navigator view and clicking Properties > COBOL Settings.
Copybook paths Project > Properties > Micro Focus COBOL > Copybook Paths. The setting here takes precedence over the COBCPY environment variable setting.
Copybooks ignoredA project can contain COBOL files that don't require compiling, such as copybooks. To specify the files to avoid compiling, right-click the folders or individual files in Navigator and click Build action > Ignore.
Dependencies Dependency information is held for each project, and by default, it is updated when the project is built. This can slow down the build. To speed up the build, you can update the dependency information manually before building the project. To do this, right-click the project or file and click Update All Dependencies or Update Dependencies.
Run-time Environment Settings Project > Properties > Micro Focus COBOL > Run-time Environment Configuration. See To configure and run an application
Stop a build in progressClick the red square, Terminate in the Progress view. To turn on this view, click Window > Show View > Other > General > Progress.

Next ...

Cheat sheetsHelp > Cheat Sheets > COBOL Development
Customised cheat sheetsYou can write your own cheat sheets and make these available to your users. See the Platform Plug-in Developer Guide in the Eclipse Help.