Resolving conflicts between reserved keywords and data item names

Micro Focus continues to enhance the COBOL language, for example, by expanding the list of reserved COBOL words and adding new keywords to it as part of new levels of the COBOL language. Each Micro Focus COBOL release corresponds to a particular level. You can use the MFLEVEL Compiler directive to enable Micro Focus COBOL-specific reserved words in your code and change the behavior of certain features to be compatible with a specific level of the language.

If you use Visual COBOL to compile applications created with an older Micro Focus COBOL product, and these applications use data names that are now reserved keywords in Visual COBOL, you receive a COBOL syntax error COBCH0666 ("Reserved word used as data name or unknown data description qualifier"). To work around this issue and continue using some of the reserved words as data names in your source code, you can either:

use the REMOVE Compiler directive to remove individual keywords from the reserved words list
set the MFLEVEL Compiler directive to a lower level which corresponds to the level your applications are at (see the information about MFLEVEL of some Micro Focus COBOL products further down this section). This removes all reserved keywords which have been added for levels above that level from the reserved words list.

You can set both directives from the command line, in your source code, or in the Additional directives field in the project's COBOL properties.

Setting directives from the command line

To use REMOVE from a Visual COBOL command prompt, type the following:

cobol myprogram.cbl remove(title) ;

The command above removes TITLE as a keyword from the language so you can use it as an identifier in a COBOL program.

To use the set of reserved words that was used for Net Express v5.1 WrapPack 5, use this command line:

cobol myprogram.cbl mflevel"15" ;

Setting directives in the source code

To set either one of the directives in your source code, type the following starting with $ in the indication area of your COBOL program:

$set remove "ReservedWord"

Or:

$set mflevel"nn"

Setting directives in the IDE

To set either one of the directives in the project's properties:

In the IDE, click Project > Properties > Micro Focus > Project Settings > COBOL.
In the Additional directives field, click , and in the Additional directives dialog box, type MFLEVEL"nn" or REMOVE "ReservedWord", then click OK.
Click Apply and then OK.

MFLEVEL of some Micro Focus COBOL product releases and reserved words added for them

These are the keywords that have been added to the reserved words list for some of the more recent Micro Focus COBOL products:

Visual COBOL R4 (MFLEVEL"16"):
- ATTRIBUTES
- ENCODING
- NAMESPACE
- NAMESPACE-
- VALIDATING
- XML-
- XML-SCHEMA
Net Express and Server Express versions 6.0 WrapPack 2 and 5.1 WrapPack 5 (MFLEVEL "15"):
- DATA-POINTER
- OBJECT-REFERENCE
Net Express 6.0 and Server Express 6.0 (MFLEVEL "14"):
- BIT
- BOOLEAN
- GROUP-USAGE