Editing Programs

Debugging COBOL Applications

Chapter 7: Navigating Source Code

Mainframe Express provides facilities for finding your way around programs:

• Finding an item or text within a program, including locating the COBOL Divisions and Sections

• Finding text across multiple files

7.1 Finding Text and Other Program Items

You can search in a number of ways for specific text within a program and look for data items, procedures and COBOL Divisions and Sections. There are ways of:

• Finding and replacing text in the current file.

  These features operate purely on a text basis - they are not concerned with whether or not you are searching for a data item or a procedure. For example, you can:

  • Find a single or all occurrences of a string

  • Find the next or previous occurrences of a string

  • Replace all or just the next or previous occurrence of one string with another

• Finding definitions of data items and procedures.

  If you are debugging a program and see a data item or procedure referenced somewhere, you can easily move to the definition of the data item or procedure. This is useful if all you are interested in is a data item's PICTURE clause.

• Finding where data items and procedures are used in a program.

  Find COBOL item highlights all the lines where a data item or procedure is used. The prefix area of each highlighted line also shows a tag that indicates how the data item or procedure is used on that line (for example, if it is defined, referenced or modified).

• Finding different parts of a COBOL program.

  To ease the problem of navigating around a large program with which you might not be very familiar, you can specify that the cursor is positioned on the first line of a Section or Division in a COBOL program, such as the Procedure Division, Working-Storage Section or File Section.

• Suggesting alternative words.

  If you cannot remember all of the name of a data item or procedure, type as much as you can remember and ask for a list of suggestions from which to choose. You must have compiled the program before you can use this feature.

7.2 Finding Text Across Multiple Files

Mainframe Express enables you to scan a number of different files for search text, which is useful if you know that a phrase occurs somewhere in your files but you don't know which files. Using this feature, known as Find in Files, is similar to searching for text in the current file, with the following exceptions:

• In addition to the string to search for, you specify the files you want to search and the folders you want to search.

  Searching is not restricted to those files in the current project.

• Information on lines containing the search string is displayed on the Find in Files page of the Output Window.

  You can double-click one of these lines to position the cursor on the relevant line in the source.

• Lines containing the search string are not highlighted in the source

• You cannot compress the display to show only those source lines containing the search string

Editing Programs

Debugging COBOL Applications