Setting property groups

Use the syslib property to resolve the following types of statements:

• COPY <COPYBOOK_NAME> (COBOL and HLASM)

• %INCLUDE <INCLUDE_NAME> (PL/I)

For the value of syslib, provide an array of directory path names (for local property groups) or data set names (for mvs property groups) for IBM Z Open Editor to find includes. You can provide multiple paths to resolve includes in different folders. For local property groups, you can specify a path relative to your IDE workspace (only one workspace folder is supported for now) or an absolute path on your development machine.

Use the libraries setting to resolve the following types of statements:

• COPY <COPYBOOK_NAME> IN <LIBRARY_NAME> (COBOL)

• %INCLUDE <LIBRARY_NAME> (<INCLUDE_NAME>) (PL/I)

You can provide multiple libraries within the libraries array of a property group. Each library object in the libraries array consists of two properties:

• The name property within the libraries setting must match the library name used in the progam. For example, to resolve the library reference in the COBOL statement COPY COPYFILE IN MYLIB, the value of name must be "MYLIB".

• The locations property is an array of folder paths you provide for the associated library name. The setting looks into the folder paths to resolve the copybook or include.

IBM Z Open Editor supports setting property groups for multi-root workspaces. Multi-root workspaces allow you to work with multiple project folders in Visual Studio Code. This can be very helpful when you are working on several related projects at one time. For more information, see multi-root workspaces documentation.

When there are multiple projects opened in one workspace using multi-root workspaces in Visual Studio Code, each project may have its own .vscode directory individually defining settings that should only apply for that project. To avoid collisions, only resource (that is, file or folder) settings are applied while you are working with multi-root workspaces. Settings that affect the entire editor are ignored. For example, two projects cannot set different zoom levels at the same time.

User settings are supported the same way as with single-folder workspaces, but you can also set global workspace settings that will apply to all folders in your multi-root workspace. Global workspace settings will be stored in your .code-workspace file.

For more information about multi-root workspaces settings, see multi-root workspaces settings documentation.

IBM Z Open Editor supports glob patterns, relative path patterns, and absolute path patterns for local files in order to provide syslib locations as well as locations of libraries. Below are some examples about adding property groups using glob patterns, relative path, and absolute path for local files.

• Glob patterns can have the following syntax:

  • ? to match on one character in a path segment

  • * to match one or more characters in a path segment

  • ** to match any number of path segments.

• Refer to glob patterns documentation for more information.

• An example using basic glob patterns for Windows and Mac:

  Windows and Mac:

  "zopeneditor.propertygroups": [
    {
      "name": "local-files",
      "type": "local",
      "syslib": [
        "zopeneditor-sample/**",
        "zopeneditor-sample/**/COPYFILES"
      ],
      "libraries": [
        {
          "name": "MYFILE",
          "locations": [
            "zopeneditor-sample/**/COPY*",
            "zopeneditor-sample/**/INCLUD?LIB"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]

• Notes:

  Windows: Only use forward slashes (/) in glob expressions. Though windows uses either / or \ as its path separator, only / characters are used by this glob implementation. You must use only forward slashes in glob expressions. Backslashes will always be interpreted as escape characters, not path separators.

  Performance warning: For performance reasons, if your specified property groups contain a glob pattern that returns more than 20 directories to search, revise the search pattern to match less in order to increase performance for finding copybooks and include files.

• IBM Z Open Editor supports relative path patterns in order to provide syslib locations as well as locations of libraries. Consider the example below for a user who has opened a zopeneditor-sample workspace:

  Windows and Mac:

  "zopeneditor.propertygroups": [
    {
      "name": "local-files",
      "type": "local",
      "syslib": [
        "../zopeneditor-sample/COPYBOOK",
        "../zopeneditor-sample/INCLUDES"
      ],
      "libraries": [
        {
          "name": "MYFILE",
          "locations": [
            "../zopeneditor-sample/COPYLIB",
            "../zopeneditor-sample/INCLUDELIB"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]

• IBM Z Open Editor supports absolute path patterns in order to provide syslib locations as well as locations of libraries.

  Windows:

  "zopeneditor.propertygroups": [
      {
        "name": "local-files",
        "type": "local",
        "syslib": [
          "C:\\Users\\<username>\\Desktop\\zopeneditor-sample\\COPYBOOK",
          "C:/Users/<username>/Desktop/zopeneditor-sample/INCLUDES"
        ],
        "libraries": [
          {
            "name": "MYFILE",
            "locations": [
              "C:/Users/<username>/Desktop/zopeneditor-sample/COPYLIB",
              "C:\\Users\\<username>\\Deskto\\zopeneditor-sample\\INCLUDELIB"
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    ]

  Mac:

  "zopeneditor.propertygroups": [
      {
        "name": "local-files",
        "type": "local",
        "syslib": [
          "/Users/<username>/Desktop/zopeneditor-sample/COPYBOOK",
          "/Users/<username>/Desktop/zopeneditor-sample/INCLUDES"
        ],
        "libraries": [
          {
            "name": "MYFILE",
            "locations": [
              "/Users/<username>/Desktop/zopeneditor-sample/COPYLIB",
              "/Users/<username>/Desktop/zopeneditor-sample/INCLUDELIB"
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    ]

Starting from IBM Z Open Editor 1.2.0, file names to be matched via local Syslib or Libraries entries are case-insensitive by default. For example, if you have a local copybook file named book1.cpy in a workspace folder specified by a local property group, then the COBOL statement COPY BOOK1. would still resolve the file, even on a case-sensitive operating system such as Linux or Macs using a case-sensitive disk format. In earlier versions of Z Open Editor, this was strictly case-sensitive on case-sensitive operating systems.

Although this new behavior provides more flexibility for users who create copybooks and include files in lowercase, it could lead to problems in a team where members use different operating systems or switch from VS Code to Eclipse Che. For example, on a case-sensitive operating system files could be created in the same folder that are only different in their casing, such as Book1 and BOOK1, but this would cause problems on case-insensitive file systems such as Windows. Therefore, to enforce exact case matching, you can enable the user setting "zopeneditor.enforceCaseSensitiveIncludeFileNames", which by default is false. Setting it to true means that even on Windows the exact same casing of the file name as specified in the program's code is required. This applies to COBOL, PL/I, and HLASM.

Note: This behavior also applies to the path names specified in property groups, which are case-insensitive by default, but can be made case-sensitive with this setting. However, this currently only works on Windows and Mac. On Linux and therefore Eclipse Che the property group path names are always cases-sensitive. Only the file names on the file system are matched case-insensitive when configured that way on Linux.

A COBOL or PL/I program can be written to use the SQL communication area (SQLCA) and SQL descriptor area (SQLDA) to check return status for embedded SQL statements, or the program can use the SQL diagnostics area to check return status.

SQLCA and SQLDA includes are usually in-built and not added in the zopeneditor property groups. In IBM Z Open Editor, SQLCA and SQLDA copybooks are excluded from the searches because they do not exist, or because they are not of interest for development. It will not find these copybooks from the mentioned syslib or libraries in the property groups.