Embedding an external preprocessor - like EXEC ADABAS ...

[Reinhard-Prehofer]

Noone expects you to implement a preprocessor for Adabas for example, however there are a lot of sources around where calls to be resolved by differente preprocessors are written into the cobol sources following a pattern of for example: EXEC ADABAS <adabas-statement> END-EXEC.

(sure there is a similarity to exec sql <sql-statements> end-exec.

• For the time being it would be nice to have a parser feature implemented that would skip/ignore input between a certain start-pattern and a certain end-pattern: In out case this would be "EXEC ADABAS" as a start and END-EXEC (with a dot) as the end-pattern. Sooner or later, however, this approach will lead to missing declarations in the source files. Just think of "exec adabas copy file=myfile ... end-exec" to act like a copy myfile ... and the copybook not being resolved.
• Alternatively, but much more complicated for the parser per se there could be a callback to the PreProcessor from SoftwareAg (manufacturer of Adabas), so that the exec adabas end-exec are resolved into a couple of Cobol-Statements, be they declaration or invocation of code. (the preprocessor of Adabas is more or less behaving similar to exec sql preprozessors - the biggest difference being the lack of documentation being available).

• A third approach - easiest for your ;) - would be the implementation of an own preprocessor, which resolves all the exec adabas ... end-exec statements by calling the SAG-Preprocessor (an application running in "PREDICT") and

  only this resolved cobol code is to be parsed by the cobol85parser.

Any suggestion/recommandation as of how to proceed with such sources? Source snippets are like following:

001810 EXEC ADABAS COPY          FILE=x4711-DAT12A                      17.01.94
001820                           MEM=vd4711A                            17.01.94
001830                           END-EXEC.                              Y2600120

001890*EXEC ADABAS GENERATE      FILE=x4711-DAT12C                      15.08.96
001900*                          RECORD-BUFFER-NAME=vd4711C             15.08.96
001910*                          PREFIX=T11-                            15.08.96
001920*                          END-EXEC.                              15.08.96

005030    EXEC ADABAS FORMAT-BUFFER                                     10.05.10
005040                FILE=x4711-TAB12A                                 10.05.10
005050                FORMAT-BUFFER-NAME=FB-V0TAB12A                    10.05.10
005060                OFFSET=V                                          10.05.10
005070    END-EXEC.                                                     10.05.10

[Reinhard-Prehofer]

meanwhile we have implemented an Exec-Adabas-PreProcessor which comments out the exec-adabas ... end-exec statements in the Cobol sources and replaces it by the name of a cobol copy book. This cobol copy book will be filled by issuing various batchmode predict statements, all of them resulting into legitimate cobol declarations. ... thus I am closing that issue.