ILE-Cobol Subscript range (bug or feature)

[Vanya Jovic <jovic@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        Devil's advocate again :))

        Hi, ppl.

According to ILE COBOL/400 Reference & Programmer's Guide, range of
array's or table's subscript should be between 1 and number in OCCURS
clause. And subscript can be any integer variable or index declared in
INDEXED BY clause. Nice. If you use integer variable and make it
bigger than number in OCCURS clause, run time error occurs in the moment
when you try to move something to table element subscribed by that
variable. But if you set index to number greater then a number in OCCURS
clause, and then move something to table element subscribed by
that index, nothing happens. No warrning. Even worse, memory out of
table's boundaries is beeing changed (and, you guess, data in another
table is corrupted). I've just spent whole morning debbugging service
program (24 modules, thanks for asking), trying to find out which phantom
was populating decimal fields in one table with garbage. It turned out
that it was done by completely irrelevant table, in completely irrelevant
module where programmer typed smaller number in OCCURS clause than he
shold have.

        I red that part of manual a few times, but it doesn't say anything
about this kind of difference in behaviour between integer variable and
index. I checked it in ILE environment, but I'm pretty sure that same
would happened in OPM. 

        Any comments, thoughts ????

Vanya

+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---