Forum: OpenCOBOL

REBOL release 3.0. libr3.so for GNU/Linux. Rebol Technologies has released a Host Kit. Essentially a shared library, that will be official core REBOL and first layer of open source console code, which means REBOL can now be linked to.

Initial trials and tribulations, opencobol.org forum post

Looking forward.

Another potential project. OpenCOBOL Sockets.

If we can do some groundwork and describe a clean OpenCOBOL interface to sockets, Roger may take a kick at the technical bits to make it happen.

So, this project will first be a "describe and document". The TikiWiki add1tocobol site should be perfect for this.

Roger has voiced opinion that having CALL "CBL_OC_SOCKETS" won't really cut the mustard. We need to spec out the various layers and have "CBL_OC_ACCEPT", "CBL_OC_SEND", "CBL_OC_POLL" etc. (Those are sample names ... but the drift is, lower-level, split functionality, not one big animal.)

Cheers

There is potential for the OpenCOBOL build environment to include a new option;

./configure --with-guile

To link to the GNU Scheme Guile shared library. Any interest? Does anyone here feel it would be useful to have a Lisp dialect available to OpenCOBOL applications?

Unlike other extensions that code has been posted for here and on opencobol.org, this scripting feature would be built into the OpenCOBOL autoconf toolset.

Information on Guile, can be found at GNU Guile

An example of the types of scripting allowed by Guile

(define (factorial n)    ; define a factorial function
    (if (zero? n) 1 (* n (factorial (- n 1)))))
(factorial 42)
1405006117752879898543142606244511569936384000000000

but that is just technical eye candy; the power will be in using this engine to extend your own OpenCOBOL applications and allowing user generated control and flexibility.

Cheers

From opencobol.org,
I'd like to open a community project to add PRINT functionality to OpenCOBOL.

It'll be a CALL "CBL_OC_PRINT" USING layer that does all the cross-platform monkey business.

More soon here and on the main opencobol.org forum.

Cheers,
Brian