The Integrated Preprocessor is supported for native COBOL only.
Several preprocessors can be active simultaneously on the same source program. They are arranged in a stack so that the Compiler calls the top preprocessor in the stack, this preprocessor calls the next preprocessor and so on to the preprocessor at the bottom of the stack which actually reads the source code. Each line of source is then passed through every preprocessor in turn until it reaches the top of the stack and is passed to the Compiler. In order for this to work, the preprocessor must obey some additional rules.
The Compiler writes directives to the command line when it makes the initial call to a preprocessor. The preprocessor reads this command line and, if it finds a PREPROCESS directive, invokes the preprocessor named in it. It also passes any parameters following the directive to the invoked preprocessor by writing these in turn to the command line and continues the hand-shaking process described in this section.
As preprocessor directives to the Compiler are terminated by the ENDP directive or the end of the line, multiple PREPROCESS directives must all appear on the same line in a directives file.
The interface between two preprocessors is identical to that between the Compiler and preprocessor specified above, thus it is possible to use a stackable preprocessor in both stacked and unstacked situations. A preprocessor which has not been designed to be stackable must be stacked at the end of the stack where it is directly reading the source code.
If you are stacking another preprocessor on top of the CP preprocessor, to enable support for conditional compilation, it must support the following:
In most cases, preprocessors act on discrete sets of syntax and all produce valid COBOL syntax, so it is unlikely that more than one preprocessor will want to process a particular source line. However, it is possible that preprocessors in a stack represent language levels so that a source line is edited several times by the different preprocessors on its route through the stack to the Compiler. In this case, care must be taken to read the information in the response field so that the relationship between the source code and the code that finally reaches the Compiler is maintained. The order in which the stacking takes place should also be chosen carefully if code altered by one preprocessor is also to be successfully modified by a second preprocessor.