Comment Your Binder Language

Published: July 11, 2007

Hey, Ted:

Because of Sarbanes-Oxley, we have a new requirement in our shop that all source members must include comments that tell the usual stuff--who did what, when and why they did it, etc. While we have always done that sort of thing (well, most of the time), there are certain types of source members we never bothered to comment. A good example is ILE binder language. I've looked for, but never found, a document that tells how to comment binder language. Do you know?

--Pat

IBM didn't make it easy for you, Pat. I wondered the same thing myself a while back, and finally found one reference, in the V5R2 ILE Concepts manual.

According to the manual, you can use the same /* and */ comment delimiters that are used in such programming languages as CL, C, and Java. Here's an example from that book.

STRPGMEXP  PGMLVL(*CURRENT)
 EXPORT SYMBOL('Term')
 EXPORT SYMBOL('Old_Rate') /* Original Rate procedure with four parameters */
 EXPORT SYMBOL('Amount')
 EXPORT SYMBOL('Payment')
 EXPORT SYMBOL('OpenAccount')
 EXPORT SYMBOL('CloseAccount')
 EXPORT SYMBOL('Rate')           /* New Rate procedure that supports +
                                     a fifth parameter, Credit_History */
ENDPGMEXP

Notice that there are two comments. The second one appears to need a plus sign to continue on to the next line.

Before I found this link, I had employed a brute-force method, trying delimiters that worked in other source types, and my findings were a little different from what the book says.

First, I found that the double-dash method, which I often use in SQL scripting, works in binder language.

-- Author: Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis, Ph.D.
-- Date written:  July 11, 2007

Second, I also discovered that the CL comment delimiters are allowed, but I never used a continuation character for multi-line comments.

/*   Author: Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis, Ph.D.
     Date written:  July 11, 2007           */

However, nobody told SEU about my two findings, so SEU flags these comment structures as errors.

I also discovered that the binder language processor ignores blank lines.

I hope that helps, Pat. I'd hate to see you shipped off to the pen for failure to comment your binder language. ;)

--Ted

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