Re: J4 - presentation/discussion on "Future of the COBOL Standard"

"Richard" <riplin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:8ea4f6d9-93f3-47a4-8416-90479e7771ba@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Mar 15, 2:52 pm, Robert <n...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 22:22:45 +1300, "Pete Dashwood" 
>> <dashw...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> wrote:
<snip>
>
> No, you are wrong, again. The 31 character limit is that the _first_
> 31 characters of user defined words are used. Anything after 31 is
> ignored. So if some legacy code has used this by having longer names,
> but has been uncaring that the additional characters are consistent,
> then it will impact that code.
>

Richard,
  Normally I agree with your posts about the Standard, but can you point
to 
something that says that teh first 31 characters are used - but that you
can 
have a conforming source program with more than 31 character user-defined
words? 
(I know SOME implementations do this, but I don't think it is in the
Standard).

In the '02 Standard, I see

"8.3.1.1 COBOL words
A COBOL word is a character-string of not more than 31 characters ..."

-- 
Bill Klein
 wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com