GnuCOBOL 3.2 Release Candidate #2 announcement

[Arnold Trembley]

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Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2023 08:21:47 +0100
From: Simon Sobisch <simons...@gnu.org>
To: gnucobo...@gnu.org
Subject: GnuCOBOL 3.2 Release Candidate #2
Message-ID: <5acd8460-58de-2803...@gnu.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

The release of GnuCOBOL 3.2 is imminent.

Please help to make this release as good as possible by downloading
and testing this release candidate.


You can find the source downloads as always on gnu.org and on the
SourceForge mirror:

https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnucobol/gnucobol-3.2-rc2.tar.lz
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnucobol/gnucobol-3.2-rc2.tar.gz
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnucobol/gnucobol-3.2-rc2.tar.xz
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnucobol/gnucobol-3.2-rc2.tar.bz2
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnucobol/gnucobol-3.2-rc2_win.7z

https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnucobol/files/gnucobol/3.2/


The changes from GnuCOBOL 3.1 to 3.2 are huge (see NEWS file), the
changes GnuCOBOL 3.2-rc1 to 3.2-rc2 are as follows:


Changes:
* the option -febcdic-table which was added in 3.2 does not use
a set of hard-coded translation tables, but provides those as files,
allowing addition of new tables and adjustments
* for comparison of COMP-3 fields the full size is used (including
the padding byte), as done in other implementations; also
there is no difference between "positive / negative /unsigned zero"

Performance:
* faster explicit or internal conversion between USAGE COMP-3
COMP-6/DISPLAY/BINARY; as well as comparison between any
binary coded decimal and ADD/SUBTRACT for those USAGEs
* faster SORT for numeric keys

Bigger Fixes:
* ANY LENGTH may have reference-modification again
* generation of subscripts and lengths > 2GB are restored
* improvement for USAGE NATIONAL storage (still not implemented)
* reserved word list fixes
* several portability issues and compiler/analyzer warnings are fixed

Features:
* auto-recognition of reference-format in COBOL source file based on
first line, the format to use can be explicit specified via -fformat
option
* parsing of PIC U / USAGE UTF-8 / DISPLAY-1


If no problems are found, GnuCOBOL 3.2.0 should be released
around 2023-02-23. It is expected that both the documentation and the
internal testsuite is extended until then.

Regards,
Simon Sobisch

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--
https://www.arnoldtrembley.com/