OpenCOBOL

Guide to OpenCOBOL

Table of contents:

• Hello OpenCOBOL
• Files
  • Sequential
  • Indexed
    • START

Introduction

OpenCOBOL is an open-source COBOL compiler. OpenCOBOL implements a substantial part of the COBOL 85 and COBOL 2002 standards, as well as many extensions of the existent COBOL compilers.

OpenCOBOL translates COBOL into C and compiles the translated code using the native C compiler. You can build your COBOL programs on various platforms, including Unix/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

License

• The compiler is licensed under GNU General Public License.
• The run-time library is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License.

Project home

The OpenCOBOL project has its own website at http://opencobol.org and the forums there are quite active with growing numbers of people discovering this comprehensive development system.

Getting Started

OpenCOBOL can be installed using one of the many pre-built packages or compiled from sources.

Packaged system example

For Debian GNU/Linux, use

# apt-get install open-cobol

and you should be good to go with OpenCOBOL 1.0 from December 2007.

You should now have access to the compiler, cobc, and a module run system, cobcrun. cobcrun is not a mandatory binary, cobc is more than capable of producing native executables, but cobcrun is very effective at assisting in Programming In The Large and Modular Programming, a mainstay of COBOL development.

Building OpenCOBOL from sources

$ wget http://www.sim-basis.de/open-cobol-1.1.tar.gz
$ tar xvf open-cobol-1.1.tar.gz
$ cd open-cobol-1.1
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check
$ su
# make install
# exit
$ cobc -V

    cobc (OpenCOBOL) 1.1.0
    Copyright (C) 2001-2008 Keisuke Nishida / Roger While
    Built    Dec 11 2008 15:32:37
    Packaged Dec 11 2008 20:05:34 CET

note that the 15:32:37 is Eastern Standard Time, so it isn't really time travelling.

What's next?

Using the Navigation bar of this structured document or the Table of contents, the next step is to see the Hello OpenCOBOL page and an introductory COBOL program example.

Warm welcomes

Cheers for looking at OpenCOBOL. You will not be disappointed by this system.

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