This variable has meaning only on graphical systems such as Windows. It gives you control over the Close action that appears on the System menu in a graphical environment. You may use the QUIT_MODE variable with only the main application window. All other windows return the CMD-CLOSE event when they are closed. QUIT_MODE has no affect on windows created with the NO-CLOSE phrase. See formats 11 and 12 of the DISPLAY Statement, in the ACUCOBOL-GT Reference Manual for more information.
Many COBOL programs should not be shut down in an uncontrolled manner. This is especially true of any application that updates several files in a row. If the program is halted after updating the first file, but before updating the last, the files are left in an inconsistent state. For this reason, ACUCOBOL-GT allows you to control the Close action.
To do this, you set QUIT_MODE to a non-zero value. The value that you specify affects the Close action as follows:
| -2 | Disable Close: disables the Close action entirely. The Close menu item will appear gray on the System menu, and the user will not be able to select it. |
| -1 | Close only on input: the runtime disables the Close action except when it is waiting for user input. This prevents the user from stopping the runtime in the middle of a series of file operations, but still allows the user to quit the application any time that the application is waiting for input. |
| 0 | Always Close: the runtime halts the program whenever Close is selected from the system menu. |
| >0 | Program controlled Close: when a positive value is used, the Close item becomes a standard menu item with an ID equal to the value of QUIT_MODE. You may then handle the Close item just like any other menu item. |
For example, if you set QUIT_MODE to 100, then your program will receive exception value 100 when the user selects the Close item. If you wanted to call a special shutdown program when the user selected Close, you could assign the Close action to a hot-key program:
MENU_ITEM Hot_Key ="shutdown" 100
In this example, the "shutdown" program might pop up a small window to confirm that the user wanted to exit and, if so, do a STOP RUN.
If you start your program in safe mode with the -s runtime option, then QUIT_MODE will be initialized to -2 instead of 0. This prevents the user from using the Close menu item. A QUIT_MODE entry in the configuration file takes precedence over the default handling of -s.
If a user attempts to end the Windows session when it is not allowed, a pop-up message box asks the user to terminate the application first. You can customize the message that appears in the box by setting the TEXT configuration variable, message number 18.