acu_cobol()

The acu_cobol() function allows you to call COBOL programs and control how they are executed. This function is required in order to build and invoke the ACUCOBOL-GT runtime with a transaction processing environment like CICS.

To call COBOL subroutines directly from C, you can use the acu_cobol() routine anytime after acu_initv() has been called and before acu_shutdown() has been called.

For more information, see Calling the Runtime From a C Main Program.

Usage

The acu_cobol() function has the following prototype:

int ASTDCALL acu_cobol(ACUCOBOLINFO *data);

The struct a_cobol_info structure is defined in lib/sub.h:

struct  a_cobol_info 
{
size_t       a_cobol_info_size;
char         *pgm_name;
int          num_params;
Argument     *params;
int          exit_code;
const char   *exit_msg;
int          signal_number;
int          call_error;
long         cobol_return_code; 
unsigned     no_stop:1; 
unsigned     cache:1; 
ADM_t        debug_method; 
char         *debug_method_string; 
void         *internal; /* internal should be NULL */
};
typedef struct a_cobol_info ACUCOBOLINFO;

The ADM_t type is described in lib/sub.h as an enumeration.

typedef enum tag_ACUCOBOL_DEBUG_METHODS 
 {
ADM_NONE, 
ADM_XTERM, 
ADM_TERMINAL,
ADM_THINCLIENT, 
} ACUCOBOL_DEBUG_METHOD, ADM_t;

The enumeration values describe the debugging method to be used for the program. See the Parameters section below for more information.

Parameters

The a_cobol_info structure has the following parameters. Input variables are set before the call to acu_cobol() and output variables set after acu_cobol() returns:

Return values

The acu_cobol() function returns "0" if the call is successful and "-1" if the call failed.

The exit_code returns one of the following values defined in "sub.h":

* After a COBOL_SIGNAL or COBOL_FATAL_ERROR error, the process should not make any further calls to acu_cobol(). If another call is necessary, you must first unload and reload the runtime. If you are dynamically loading the runtime shared library on UNIX/Linux or runtime DLL on Windows, you can do this using dlclose()/dlopen() or FreeLibrary()/LoadLibrary() respectively. If you are linking directly to the runtime libraries, you will need to exit and restart the current process. Consider wrapping your executable in a shell script or another main() program that checks for a particular exit code and then loops.

The call_error can be one of the following values: