Running Your Programs

After a successful compilation, the resultant object file is ready for immediate execution (there is no link step). To run your program, make a note of the full path to your object file and return to the Windows desktop or Program Manager.

There are a variety of ways to run your program under Windows. The basic methods are:

• Selecting Run from the Start menu.
• Placing an icon for each program in a Program Group or folder, and then starting the program by double-clicking its icon.
• Naming your COBOL object files with a common file extension and associating the extension with the runtime. After the association is established, you can run a program by double-clicking on the name of the file as it appears in the File Manager or Windows Explorer, or most Windows file system navigation utilities.
• Typing wrun32 (or crun32 if you are using the console runtime) at the command prompt.

This document describes only the first option. The advantage of using the Run dialog is that it requires no special setup. However, it is a time-consuming method because you must type the command line options every time you execute the program. For the greatest convenience to the end user, it is best to set up a program icon. To set up an icon, or to create a file association to the runtime, please refer to your Windows documentation.

1. To start the Run dialog, select Run from the Start menu.
2. In the entry box, type the name of your ACUCOBOL-GT Windows runtime.

   The default name is "wrun32.exe". If you changed the name of the runtime executable, enter that name.

3. Follow the name of the runtime with any desired runtime options and the path and name of the COBOL program you want to run.
4. After you have entered the complete command line, click OK to execute the program.
5. Note:

   If you didn't add ACUCOBOL-GT to your path, you will need to specify the full path to the runtime (for example: "c:\Program Files\Micro Focus\Acucbl900\bin\wrun32.exe").

You can use the COBOL configuration variable DEFAULT_PROGRAM to specify the name of the program to execute when no program is specified on the command line. See Appendix H in the ACUCOBOL-GT documentation set for more configuration information.