The COMPILER system handle provides several attributes and methods that are helpful for either compiling class definition files in particular or for writing ABL tools that manage the compilation of ABL source files in general. These include attributes and methods to:

  • Optimize compiler performance in certain situations involving multiple class definition files in a single compilation.
  • Identify the object type name of the most recently compiled file, if it defines a class or interface.
  • Identify the number of compilation messages returned from the most recent COMPILE statement, and to identify each message and its location in the source file where it occurred. This supports compilation messages generated from multiple ABL source files in a single compilation, which can happen when compiling procedures, but which always happens when compiling several class definition files that are part of a class hierarchy.

The following sections describe the attributes and methods that support these compilation features.