Say I have the following variable-length table defined in WORKING-STORAGE
...
01 SOAP-RECORD.
05 SOAP-INPUT PIC X(8) VALUE SPACES.
05 SOAP-STATUS PIC 9 VALUE ZERO.
05 SOAP-MESSAGE PIC X(50) VALUE SPACES.
05 SOAP-ITEMS OCCURS 0 TO 500 TIMES
DEPENDING ON ITEM-COUNT
INDEXED BY ITEM-X.
10 SI-SUB-ITEMS OCCURS 0 TO 100 TIMES
DEPENDING ON SUB-COUNT
INDEXED BY SUB-X.
15 SS-KEY PIC X(8) VALUE SPACES.
15 SS-AMOUNT PIC -9(7).99 VALUE ZEROS.
15 SS-DESCR PIC x(100) VALUE SPACES.
When this program runs, will it initially allocate as much space as this table could possibly need, or is it more dynamic about allocating memory? I would guess that the DEPENDING ON
clause would make it more dynamic in the sense that it would allocate more memory as the ITEM-COUNT
variable is incremented. A co-worker tells me otherwise, but he is not 100% sure. So I would really like to know how this works in order to structure my program as efficiently as possible.
PS: Yes, I am writing a new COBOL program! It s actually a CICS web service. I don t think this language will ever die :(