The Rational® Developer
for System z® and Rational Developer for AIX® and Linux compare editor is available from the
contextual menu of the Design Explorer view.
It contains options that are specific to Rational Programming Patterns. Moreover, Rational Programming Patterns provides
a specific batch command to compare two COBOL files, or two folders
that can contain many COBOL files.
Note: If the comparison is run on two folders, the files
that have the same name in the two folders are compared.
The
comparison detects all the significant differences. So, by default,
it ignores the following differences:
- Formatting. An option can be specified to detect the formatting
differences.
- Comments.
- IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
- Pacbase constants.
- Use of the periods in the DATA DIVISION.
You start the comparison with the rpp –compare batch
command.
Its execution produces three reports. You can view
them in a spreadsheet application. You can change their display by
clicking the button in each column and by selecting the new sort value.
The
three following spreadsheets are produced:
- Overview.csv, which displays the general
information about the comparison. It contains the following columns:
- Line numbers. There is one line number for each compared file
- The names of the files, compared two by two. They are preceded
by their folder if the comparator is run on two files.
- The number of the differences found in these two files
- The number of the differences found in the PROCEDURE DIVISION
- The Pacbase constants of the two files. You can compare the two
generation contexts
- Templates.csv, which displays the character
strings that were replaced, inserted, or deleted in the compared files.
A template number is assigned to any identical replacement, insertion,
or deletion in several files.
Example: If
the same work area was inserted in more than one Program, Screen,
or Server, the comparator groups these insertions under the same template
number.
To see all the Program, Screen, or Server instances
that used this template, open the DiffList.csv spreadsheet.
It associates the template numbers with the instance names.The
Templates.csv spreadsheet
contains the following columns:
- The template number of the difference
- The number of times the template is used in all the compared files
- The template nature (insertion, replacement, or deletion)
- The number of the character strings which is added or deleted
- The added or deleted character strings
- DiffList.csv, which displays the contents
of the lines where differences are detected. By default, the differences
are sorted by Program, Screen, or Server instance. This spreadsheet
contains the following columns:
- The line number. There are as many lines as differences in all
the compared files.
- The difference rank number for each file.
Example: If, in the Overview tab, 16 differences
are indicated for a Program, this column displays 16 lines that apply
to this Program.
The difference rank number starts again at
1 after all the differences of the Program, Screen, or Server instance
are displayed in the table.
- The number of the difference template
- The number of times the difference is detected in the Program,
Screen, or Server
- The word Procedure if the line is part of the PROCEDURE
DIVISION
- The codes of the compared Program, Screen, or Server instances,
preceded by the folders if you compare folders
- The corresponding COBOL lines in the two compared files