COBOL Control Flow is an extension for Visual Studio Code that provides graphical visualization of program flow for programs written in COBOL. The extension is designed to help COBOL developers to quickly comprehend and debug COBOL programs with which they might not be familiar.
COBOL Control Flow displays paragraphs of a COBOL program as graphical nodes in an interactive graph. The edges of the graph are drawn based on the 'PERFORM' COBOL execution statements. You can interact with the graph to navigate to the relevant parts of the COBOL code, or you can navigate from the COBOL code to the relevant nodes in the graph.
COBOL Control Flow is part of Code4z, an all-round package that offers a modern experience for mainframe application developers, including COBOL Langage Support, HLASM Language Support, Explorer for Endevor, Zowe Explorer and Debugger for Mainframe extensions.
Note:
- The COBOL Control Flow extension only supports IBM Enterprise COBOL. Other versions of COBOL are not supported.
- We recommend you also install COBOL Language Support for COBOL code syntax awareness, to avoid generating COBOL Control Flow graphs from syntactically faulty code, and to enable copybook support features.
- Visual Studio Code version 1.46.0 or higher.
- Eclipse Che
The extension is activated for COBOL files with the following file extensions:
- .cobol
- .cob
- .cbl
The COBOL Control Flow extension is not compatible with other extensions that provide COBOL support except COBOL Language Support. We recommend that you disable all other COBOL-related extensions to ensure that COBOL Control Flow functions correctly.
To use the COBOL Control Flow interactive graph, generate it in the VS Code interface.
Follow these steps:
- Open a COBOL file.
- Right click inside the file editor.
- The context menu opens.
- Select Generate COBOL Control Flow.
- The COBOL Control Flow graph is generated and displayed in a new window located to the side of the COBOL file.
Once the COBOL Control Flow graph is generated you can navigate through the COBOL code by clicking on the individual nodes in the graph.
You can also click anywhere in the COBOL code to navigate to the relevant node in the graph.
Hover over a node in the COBOL Control Flow graph to display the first several lines of the corresponding paragraph.
COBOL Control Flow displays copybooks on the interactive graph as long as you have the COBOL Language Support extension installed and paths to your copybook folders are correctly configured in the COBOL Language Support extension settings.
For instructions on how to do set paths to your copybook folders, see the Copybook Support section of the COBOL Language Support documentation.
The extensions for Visual Studio Code developed by Broadcom Inc., including its corporate affiliates and subsidiaries, ("Broadcom") are provided free of charge, but in order to better understand and meet its users’ needs, Broadcom may collect, use, analyze and retain anonymous users’ metadata and interaction data, (collectively, “Usage Data”) and aggregate such Usage Data with similar Usage Data of other Broadcom customers. Please find more detailed information in License and Service Terms & Repository.
This data collection uses built-in Microsoft VS Code Telemetry, which can be disabled, at your sole discretion, if you do not want to send Usage Data.
The current release of COBOL Control Flow collects anonymous data for the following events:
- Activation of this VS Code extension
- Interaction with the nodes
- Use of zoom
- Collapse and expand of graph edges
- Count of lines of analyzed COBOL file (Performance)
- Parsing time (Performance)
- Rendering time (Performance)
- Errors
Each such event is logged with the following information:
- Event time
- Operating system and version
- Country or region
- Anonymous user and session ID
- Version numbers of Microsoft VS Code and COBOL Control Flow