GNU Cobol

[qlark]

I looked over at a point of sale terminal the other day thinking that it was created by a dos version of Foxpro ... surprise ... they indicated it was COBOL.

Is there a cheap way to look at this language ie a GNU version for Windows/Dos?

What would be required for a small (6 PC) multi user app with no runtime license? Wouldn't need to be GUI

 

[fredericofonseca]

http://home.comcast.net/~wmklein/FAQ/COBOLFAQ.htm

Regards

Frederico Fonseca
SysSoft Integrated Ltd

http://www.syssoft-int.com

 

[3gm]

Please see the FAQ.

 

[Glenn9999]

While there is indeed a GNU COBOL compiler (inactive and immature in development), there have been a number of commercial COBOL compilers that were offered back in those days for DOS.

It's going to be easier to get something for Windows these days, though. If you want something free to look at, look for the Fujitsu COBOL 3.0 free download.

 

[qlark]

Thank-you all

 

[CobolKid]

There's also another option, Check out "Kobol" by thekompany.com


Steve

 

[TonHu]

Or there is the OpenCobol project at Sourceforge.net, to be found at

http://www.opencobol.org

it's actualy a Cobol to C translator, where the C is compilable by any plain vanilla C compiler, and a runtime lib in the same category. It supports most of Cobol-85 and even a lot of Cobol-2002 'extensions', but be sure to go for the CVS sources, as the downloadable package is a bit out of date (may 2005).
This currently doesn't easily run on Windows, because you would need Cygwin/MingW to get it compiling. It does develop, because there have been often CVS updates over the last years, but the main development line is toward Linux. I know it is compilable on Windows though, even using the (free) Borland 5.51 commandline compiler, but it def. needs tweaking that I can't supply.

BTW, Kobol is also Linux-only AFAIK.

HTH
TonHu

 

[Truusvlugindewind]

Agree with TonHu. And there is also

http://tinycobol.org/

Comparable with opencobol.
Some differences:
- tinycobol genereates assembler instead of C.
- tinycobol supports the "screen section"

They both use the Berkeley DB (

http://sleepycat.com/)

for your indexed and relative files.

 

[ceh4702]

COBOL is very good at manipulating data. Usually these products have some kind of an add-on package for the visual effect like C++ or windows objects or Java Script or something else like that. Some of these products work with Cobol and some are incorporated with the Compiler or have a precompiler. COBOL can call other external programs, so if you build that into the complier, then COBOL can more easily call visual type programs or manipulate objects like C++ or Visual Basic.

COBOL is good at text and HTML is basically text so it would be easy to do that.

Different products take different approaches to how they use COBOL and whether it is more like COBOL or more like some other language with some extra COBOL Code.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.