Extensions to the functionality of the language

Access to the command line

Under POSIX it is possible to access the command line from within a program by means of ACCEPT/DISPLAY statements in conjunction with the special names ARGUMENT-NUMBER and ARGUMENT-VALUE (see “COBOL2000 Reference Manual” [1]).

Example 14-6

     IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
     ...
     SPECIAL-NAMES.
         ARGUMENT-NUMBER IS NO-OF-CMD-ARGUMENTS
         ARGUMENT-VALUE  IS CMD-ARGUMENT
     ...
     WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
     01  I   PIC  99   VALUE 0.
     01  J   PIC  99   VALUE 0.
     01  A   PIC  X(5) VALUE ALL "x".
     ...
     PROCEDURE DIVISION.
     ...
       ACCEPT I FROM NO-OF-CMD-ARGUMENTS
       DISPLAY "no.ofcommandarguments=" I
       PERFORM VARYING J FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL J > I
         ACCEPT A FROM CMD-ARGUMENT
         DISPLAY "cmd argument-" J " <" A ">"
       END-PERFORM
     ...
      DISPLAY 2 UPON NO-OF-CMD-ARGUMENTS
      ACCEPT A FROM CMD-ARGUMENT
      DISPLAY "argument-2" " :" A ":"
     ...

Calling the program

/a.out AAAA BBB CC D

Runtime log

no. of command arguments=4
cmd argument-1 <AAAA >
cmd argument-2 <BBB  >
cmd argument-3 <CC   >
cmd argument-4 <D    >
argument-2 :BBB  :