Hi,

I have a COBOL program that defines a structure:

01 SOMENAME EXTERNAL.   05 FIELD1 PIC X(8).   05 FIELD2 PIC S9(4) BINARY. 

I have an assembler module:

SOMENAME CSECT REAL_FIELD1 DC CL8'XXXXX' REAL_FIELD2 DC C'X'

But, when I examine the fields from the cobol code, they are empty (default values).

Has anyone any idea what I'm missing here?

Frank

You're missing a mechanism to associate your CSECT with the external data. I don't know if there is such a mechanism, but if there is it would be in some Language Environment manual.

What are you trying to do, exactly?

COBOL EXTERNAL items are established within the COBOL runtime, and cannot be accessed by other high-level languages (C/C++, PL/I) even though those languages also have EXTERNAL items. Indeed, the advice is to ensure that the names of EXTERNAL items are different across different languages.

I can't find a specific exclusion for Assembler, but also can't find a reference for any method to reference a COBOL EXTERNAL item from Assembler. Given that it is not possible for high-level languages, I'd presume it is not possible for Assembler.

Once it is known what you are trying to achieve, there may be suggestions on how to achieve that.

Bill,

I'm trying to access a number of constants in an assembler csect that is linked in to the load module containing my COBOL code.

If EXTERNAL is not the mechanism to accomplish this, how can this be done in COBOL?

Frank

The mechanism to give another program access to your data is to use the CALL in COBOL. On the USING you name the data you want to "pass" (it is only the address of the start of each item that is "passed") and then in your Assembler program you take the parameter list and assign addresses to your respective CSECTs which map the data.

To clarify a a bit what Bill's trying to say, and suggest an            
implementation, you can create an assembler module to return the address
of a table that associates CSECT names with their addresses with entries
like:                                                                   
                                                                        
    DC CL8'csect'                                                       
    DC V(csect)                                                         
    WXTRN csect                                                         
                                                                        
and in the COBOL caller scan though the table to find the desired CSECT
address. The WXTRN (weak external) means that if the csect is not       
present, the pointer to it will be zero without generating a diagnostic
during the bind