Compiler Compatibility

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In larger, older organizations, it's common to find multiple versions of Cobol in production at the same time. As this is written (January 2021), the current version of IBM Enterprise Cobol is 6.3. Any given large organization may have some programs in production that are compiled with COBOL 85, Cobol 3, Cobol 4, Cobol 5, and Cobol 6. They are likely to be in the midst of a gradual conversion of some key applications from one compiler version to another; as of today, many organizations are moving from 4.2 to 6.3, for example.

The implication for Cobol Check is that the test code we generate must not assume the resulting test program will be compiled with the most recent version of IBM Enterprise Cobol. A "safe" Cobol level might be Cobol 3. We have to be careful about generating code that uses very recently-added features of Cobol.