Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

 ◄Key► ◄Summary►                             ◄Up► ◄Contents► ◄Index► ◄Back►
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
     This directive only affects .OBJ files.
 
     Normally the COBOL system stores the program data in compressed
     form, then expands the data when the program is loaded.
     Specifying EXPANDDATA when compiling to an .OBJ file causes the
     data to be stored in its expanded form.
 
     This saves a small amount of time at initial program entry, and
     on DOS it gives a smaller .EXE file because information to guide
     the expansion can be omitted; DOS always allocates the space for
     the expanded form in any case. On OS/2 it gives a slightly
     bigger .EXE file.
 
     When data is stored in this way, it will only be initialized
     once, when the program is physically loaded. Hence the IS INITIAL
     phrase of the PROGRAM-ID statement will not work. Also, a program
     which is canceled and called again will only be reinitialized if
     it is a separate module, such that the cancel-call causes a
     physical reload from disk. The directive is ignored when
     compiling to a .GNT file.
                                    -♦-