Very Computer

In newsgroup: comp.os.linux.development.system

Quote:

> Does anyone know if there is a freely available source for a COBOL compiler
> for Linux? If not, is there anything in the works, anything that someone
> could recommend as a starting point?

> This newsgroup seemed the best place to ask. If you have any other
> suggestions please let me know.

I'm pretty sure there isn't anything, but I could be wrong, of course.
A decent way to do it might be to write a COBOL compiler that output C
source.

        -hpa
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Well, it wouldn't be too difficult to write something that translates
"add 2 to b." to "b += 2;" But what would you do with ISAM reads and
writes? And what about record locking? The SORT verb? You would have
to write a large function library to handle this, and once you've done
this work, you're not going to want to give it away.

A company in Texas developed a COBOL-to-C translator; You might be able

--
"I am a law abiding citizen, its the law that makes me a criminal!"

Bob Broughton

WWW: http://users.uniserve.com/~roberb7
Vancouver, BC, Canada

This question gets asked a lot, believe it or not.  If you search on
www.dejanews.com, you should be able to bring up one of Christopher Browne's
information packed replies on the subject.

Dave Cook

In newsgroup: comp.os.linux.development.system

Quote:

> > I'm pretty sure there isn't anything, but I could be wrong, of course.
> > A decent way to do it might be to write a COBOL compiler that output C
> > source.

> Well, it wouldn't be too difficult to write something that translates
> "add 2 to b." to "b += 2;" But what would you do with ISAM reads and
> writes? And what about record locking? The SORT verb? You would have
> to write a large function library to handle this, and once you've done
> this work, you're not going to want to give it away.

ISAM you can probably implement on top of libdb.
Record locking: lockf().
SORT verb?  Sounds like qsort() to me, but I don't know COBOL well
enough.

As far as not wanting to give it away after a lot of work, consider
gcc, g77, gpc, XFree86, Linux, glibc, gnat (GNU Ada), GNUStep, Emacs...

        -hpa
--
    PGP: 2047/2A960705 BA 03 D3 2C 14 A8 A8 BD  1E DF FE 69 EE 35 BD 74
    See http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/ for web page and full PGP public key
        I am Bah' -- ask me about it or see http://www.bahai.org/
   "To love another person is to see the face of God." -- Les Misrables