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Possible Pointer Modification Via CALL Statements and Prototypes

For this example, use the demonstration file demo2.cbl.

  1. Create the intermediate code file:
    cobol demo2.cbl /anim /nognt;
    This example contains calls to the library routines CBL_ALLOC_MEM or CBL_FREE_MEM; without call prototypes any pointers provided to these routines are effectively redefined to alphanumeric.
  2. Run Scan64 on this program by entering the command:
    cblscan64 demo2
    This produces the following report:
    Processing file 'demo2.int' 
    **Possible unsafe modification of pointer in a 'BY REFERENCE' parameter 
    **in CALL 'CBL_ALLOC_MEM' statement at (file: demo2.cbl, line: 8) 
      Pointer : PTR (file: demo2.cbl, def: 5) 
    **Possible unsafe reference of pointer in a 'BY VALUE' parameter 
    **in CALL 'CBL_FREE_MEM' statement at (file: demo2.cbl, line: 11) 
      Pointer : PTR (file: demo2.cbl, def: 5)
      Finished file 'demo1.int' - pointer problems could exist
  3. However, you can specify that Scan64 should use the prototype file demoproto.cpy which defines the APIs CBL_ALLOC_MEM and CBL_FREE_MEM:
    cblscan64 -t demoproto.cpy demo2
    This produces the following report:
    Processing file 'demo2.int' 
    Finished file 'demo2.int' - pointer usage is OK
In this case, no messages are generated because Scan64 knows that CBL_ALLOC_MEM and CBL_FREE_MEM expect pointers to be passed into them and there is no danger of them being treated as fixed size alphanumeric.
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