Dealing with Pointers in Cobol

In Micro Focus COBOL, you can only use the ADDRESS OF operator to obtain the address of a data item in the LINKAGE SECTION. Pointers to items must be passed from other programs. To get around this limitation, a sub-program may be written to which an empty pointer and a data item is passed. Since the pointer is in the called program's linkage section, the called program can set the pointer for the calling program.

*********************************************************************

* Subprogram to obtain the address of an item *

*********************************************************************

	identification division.
	program-id.
	getadd.
	data division.

	linkage section.
	01 data-item pic x(1).
	01 block-pointer pointer.

	procedure division using data-item, block-pointer.
	set block-pointer to address of data-item
	exit program.
	end program getadd.