BabyCobol: CALL

Format

Alternative format

Remarks

• Executes another program denoted with FileName, from the start of its PROCEDURE DIVISION until its end or until its STOP, whatever comes first, and the continues to execute the current program from the next statement.
• If the call uses arguments, they should match exactly the arguments of the PROCEDURE DIVISION of the program being called.
• BY REFERENCE arguments can be accessed and modified by the called program.
• BY CONTENT arguments be accessed by the called program, but cannot be modified.
• BY VALUE arguments can be accessed and modified by the called program, but the modification do not propagate back to the caller.
• The basic format (first diagram above) is enough to implement simple BabyCobol-to-BabyCobol calls; the alternative format (the second diagram) can be used for complex scenarios like BabyCobol-to-C calls from the GPCE’23 paper.

Origins

BabyCobol is a project by Dr. Vadim Zaytsev a.k.a. @grammarware. Page last updated in October 2023.