The following improvements have been made to managed COBOL:
- Extension methods and extending operators
- Managed COBOL now supports extension methods. This feature enables you to add methods to existing types without the need to edit or recompile the code. You can also extend operators.
- The SYNC modifier for methods
- The SYNC modifier locks the values of the arguments sent to the method, so that they do not change while the method is processing.
- Nested classes
- In managed COBOL, a nested class can now be defined so that it can access the instance fields, properties and methods in its containing class. To allow this, you add the optional SHARING PARENT phrase to the nested class definition.