title: GnuCobol equivalent of NOSSRANGE
body: <p>I want to specify a single byte area in linkage section. Program A could call program B as</p>
  
  <pre><code>call 'PROGB'   using mycopybook
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>where mycopybook could be 500 bytes one time, 2000 bytes the next time etc etc.</p>
  
  <p>A "simple" way around avoiding the need to know/reserve the maximum number of bytes expected in the linkage section in program B is to define it as ONE byte (after all, program B's linkage section is only a pointer to mycopybook in memory, neither more nor less).
  Trouble is, when I try and compile program B using the following</p>
  
  <pre><code>LINKAGE SECTION.
  01  copybook-1     pic x.
  procedure division using copybook-1.
  display 'First 4 bytes passed in 'copybook-1(1:4)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get a compilation error.</p>
  
  <p>progent.cbl: 113: error: length of 'copybook-1' out of bounds: 4</p>
  
  <p>Is there some COBC parameter that is the equivalent of NOSSRANGE?</p>
  
  <p>(FWIW, In Micro Focus' Mainframe Express, the default where I worked was SSRANGE, so I had to set NOSSRANGE specifically for the example above, but after that there was no problem)</p>