Configuring Your Application for Visual Studio

As an RM/COBOL user, you can modernize your applications for Visual COBOL by using the DIALECT"RM" Compiler directive, which enables compilation and run-time behavior highly compatible with RM/COBOL.
Note: If your RM/COBOL source code uses RM/Panels syntax, refer to the RM/Panels Conversion Example for your IDE instead.

This tutorial demonstrates migrating your RM/COBOL source code to Visual COBOL using the Visual Studio IDE. It takes you through creating a new project, setting the Compiler directive, and then importing the RM/COBOL source into the project.

There are three additional files included in your Visual COBOL installation that are intended for RM/COBOL modernizations: ADISCTRL, cobkeymp, and a .dir (directives) file. The first two files configure the Micro Focus enhanced ACCEPT/DISPLAY syntax run-time support module (Adis) for interactive programs. The directives file contains REMOVE directives, which un-reserves many Micro Focus COBOL reserved words that may be used within your RM/COBOL programs. This tutorial also takes you through utilizing those in your application.