Why is encoding attribute missing in XML generated by COBOL?

user_16760755 0
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What could be the reason for difference in expected and actual output of below program? Actual output is missing encoding.

       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
       PROGRAM-ID. FOO.

       DATA DIVISION.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       01 doc PIC X(512).
       01 Greeting.
           05 msg PIC X(80) VALUE "Hello, world!".

       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
           XML GENERATE doc FROM Greeting
               WITH ENCODING 1208
               WITH XML-DECLARATION
           END-XML
           DISPLAY doc.
           STOP RUN.

The code compiled successfully. I'm using Visual COBOL 5.0 by Micro Focus.

Expected Output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Greeting><msg>Hello, world!</msg>
</Greeting>

Actual output:

<?xml version="1.0" ?><Greeting>
<msg>Hello, world!</msg></Greeting>
microfocus cobol xml
1 Answers

XML only accepts two types of encoding, utf-8 and utf-16, utf-8 being the default. From the documentation, it looks like the encoding is only necessary if it is not utf-8. Since leaving it out is legal the clause is not generated.

For utf-16 encoding, change doc to

01 doc PIC n(512) usage national.

If you look at https://www.microfocus.com/documentation/visual-cobol/VC232/EclWin/HRLHLHPDFC0G.html (Web page for MicroFocus XML GENERATE) it says that the ENCODING statement is documentary only so that does not generate any code either.

user_20413170
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