Identifying Converted COBOL Programs

When the COBOL Unicode conversion utility for z/OS runs, it places a comment at the beginning of each COBOL program that it converts:

******* Converted for Unicode (national support)  (date converted)
********************* DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE ********************
**** ALL SOURCE CODE CHANGES MUST BE DONE TO THE ANSI VERSION ****
******************** FOUND IN %PS_HOME%/SRC/CBL ******************

This comment line identifies converted programs in two ways:

  • A person looking at the program can tell whether it has been converted.

  • If you attempt to convert the COBOL source file again, this comment line prevents the conversion utility program from converting this program file again.

Note: Conversion utility comments for the z/OS Unicode environment include “(national support)” on the first line. The first line of comments generated by the COBOL conversion utility for Unix and Microsoft Windows environments read “Converted for Unicode”.