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Command line syntax

The command line for CitOESQL takes the following form:

citoesql [directive1 directive2 …] [@]filename1 [@] filename2 …

Each directive specified on the command line must be preceded by a hyphen.

filename1 filename2 … is normally a sequence of filenames. Filenames not preceded by an ‘@’ character are assumed to be COBOL source files. Each COBOL file will be preprocessed and if there are no errors detected an output file with the same name but a .cbp extension will be written.

If a filename starts with an ‘@’ character, the file is assumed to be a text file containing a list of input COBOL filenames, one per line.

If the first precompiler directive on the command line is P, then exactly two filenames must be supplied. The first is the input filename and the second is the output filename. This directive should only be used in the script used by the COBOL-IT COBOL compiler in association with the preprocess=<script> option.

Placing Precompiler Directives in Files

You can place precompiler directives in a file as well as the command line or in source code via the USE directive.

In a directives file:

  • blank lines or lines with a hash symbol (#) or semicolon (;) in column 1 are ignored
  • directives optionally be preceded by one or two hyphens(-)
  • directives may be grouped together on a line and separated by a space or comma(,)
  • directives may be grouped together and wrapped in a SQL directive thus
    • SQL(directive1 [,] directive2 …)