Cobol interview questions

Question 91 : What is the difference between NEXT SENTENCE and CONTINUE?
Answer : NEXT SENTENCE gives control to the verb following the next period. CONTINUE gives control to the next verb after the explicit scope terminator. (This is not one of COBOL II’s finer implementations). It’s safest to use CONTINUE rather than NEXT SENTENCE in COBOL II.

Question 92 : What COBOL construct is the COBOL II EVALUATE meant to replace?
Answer : EVALUATE can be used in place of the nested IF THEN ELSE statements.

Question 93 : What is the significance of ‘above the line’ and ‘below the line’?
Answer : Before IBM introduced MVS/XA architecture in the 1980’s a program’s virtual storage was limited to 16 megs. Programs compiled with a 24 bit mode can only address 16 Mb of space, as though they were kept under an imaginary storage line. With COBOL II a program compiled with a 31 bit mode can be ‘above the 16 Mb line. (This ‘below the line’, ‘above the line’ imagery confuses most mainframe programmers, who tend to be a literal minded group.)

Question 94 : What was removed from COBOL in the COBOL II implementation?
Answer : Partial list: REMARKS, NOMINAL KEY, PAGE-COUNTER, CURRENT-DAY, TIME-OF-DAY, STATE, FLOW, COUNT, EXAMINE, EXHIBIT, READY TRACE and RESET TRACE.

Question 95 : Explain call by context by comparing it to other calls.
Answer : The parameters passed in a call by context are protected from modification by the called program. In a normal call they are able to be modified.

Question 96 : What is the linkage section?
A68) The linkage section is part of a called program that ‘links’ or maps to data items in the calling program’s working storage. It is the part of the called program where these share items are defined.

Question 97: What is the difference between static call & Dynamic call
Answer : In the case of Static call, the called program is a stand-alone program, it is an executable program. During run time we can call it in our called program. As about Dynamic call, the called program is not an executable program it can executed through the called program

Question 98 : What do you feel makes a good program?
Answer : A program that follows a top down approach. It is also one that other programmers or users can follow logically and is easy to read and understand.

Question 99: How do you code Cobol to access a parameter that has been defined in JCL? And do you code the PARM parameter on the EXEC line in JCL?
Answer :
Using JCL with sysin. //sysin dd *here u code the parameters(value) to pass in to cobol program /* and in program

Question 100 : Why do we code S9(4) comp. Inspite of know ing comp-3 w ill occupy less space.
Answer : Here s9(4)comp is small integer ,so two words equal to 1 byte so totally it will occupy 2 bytes(4 words).here in s9(4) comp-3 as one word is equal to 1/2 byte.4 words equal to 2 bytes and sign will occupy 1/2 byte so totally it will occupy 3 bytes.

Author: user

Leave a Reply