This release provides improved support and integration of Open PL/I. Features include:
- Improved debugging capabilities for applications under development and running in production which help increase the programmers' productivity during and after migration.
- Support for the PLIDUMP() facility which generates a callstack and shows all static variables, local variables and API parameters that were in effect at the time of the call to PLIDUMP. Typically, you can use the facility for analysis of application failures while running in production.
- Support for an enhanced PLITEST API which allows for dynamic attachment of the PL/I Debugger at a point the application programmer specifies. In addition, the PLITEST interface now has the capability of displaying the Codewatch Debugger UI on any platform capable of hosting an X-Windows Server.
- Generation of ASA Control Characters when writing to PL/I files with the STREAM and PRINT attributes.
When writing PL/I files that are defined to have the STREAM and PRINT attributes, appropriate control characters are now written to column 1 of the output dataset to represent a new page, skip(1), skip(2), skip(3), and skip(0) (known as overstrike). This helps ease the migration and integration of PL/I applications with existing printing subsystems.
- Improved emulation of mainframe compiler and run-time system behaviors in the treatment of CONTROLLED storage.
The Open PL/I applications now allow the passing of unallocated CONTROLLED storage data items from one procedure to another. These variables can then be checked for ALLOCATION() and allocated as appropriate. This facilitates the migration and helps reduce the coding changes to the existing application logic.
