Thread: [Cobolforgcc-users] Good COBOL Text

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I haven't worked with COBOL for twenty years.  Can someone recommend a
good, modern COBOL text book?

Thanks.

-Tom

Tom Browder
Niceville, Florida
USA

I have COBOL For Dummies as an introduction but I see it didn't get very
good reviews on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/COBOL-Dummies-Arthur-Griffith/dp/0764502980/ref=pd_bbs_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196322420&sr=8-4

You can also download IBM's manuals here.
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/cobol/zos/library/

Fujitsu  COBOL manuals here
http://www.adtools.com/download/index.htm

The 2002 standard is available here (draft close to final version)
http://www.ncits.org/tc_home/j4htm/cd18all.pdf

or you can buy a copy (expensive) - I have a copy of the ANSI 85 cobol
standard.

More links here
http://www.theamericanprogrammer.com/programming/manuals.cobol.shtml

and on google.

The newsgroup comp.lang.cobol is pretty supportive too.
http://www.theamericanprogrammer.com/programming/manuals.cobol.shtml
Available via http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.cobol/topics

Regards,
Tim Josling

On Wed, 2007-11-28 at 09:44 -0600, Tom Browder wrote:
> I haven't worked with COBOL for twenty years.  Can someone recommend a
> good, modern COBOL text book?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -Tom
> 
> Tom Browder
> Niceville, Florida
> USA
> 
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: cob...@li... 
> [mailto:cob...@li...] On 
> Behalf Of tim
> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 1:55 AM
> To: Tom Browder
> Cc: cob...@li...
> Subject: Re: [Cobolforgcc-users] Good COBOL Text
<snip>
> The 2002 standard is available here (draft close to final version)
> http://www.ncits.org/tc_home/j4htm/cd18all.pdf
> 

I didn't notice this when it was posted, but I will say that there some
medium significant changes after that CD (there was at least one FCD and one
FDIS and then the final version AFTER that one).

As I recently posted, the "official" ANSI (INCITS) version of the approved
'02 Standard is available for 30USD from:

 http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=INCITS%2fISO%2fIEC+1989-2002

It is the ISO official version that is VERY expensive, see:

 http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=ISO%2fIEC+1989%3a2002

tim wrote:
> I have COBOL For Dummies as an introduction but I see it didn't get very
> good reviews on Amazon.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/COBOL-Dummies-Arthur-Griffith/dp/0764502980/ref=pd_bbs_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196322420&sr=8-4
>
> You can also download IBM's manuals here.
> http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/cobol/zos/library/
>
> Fujitsu  COBOL manuals here
> http://www.adtools.com/download/index.htm
>
> The 2002 standard is available here (draft close to final version)
> http://www.ncits.org/tc_home/j4htm/cd18all.pdf
>
> or you can buy a copy (expensive) - I have a copy of the ANSI 85 cobol
> standard.
>
> More links here
> http://www.theamericanprogrammer.com/programming/manuals.cobol.shtml
>
> and on google.
>
> The newsgroup comp.lang.cobol is pretty supportive too.
> http://www.theamericanprogrammer.com/programming/manuals.cobol.shtml
> Available via http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.cobol/topics
>
> Regards,
> Tim Josling
>
> On Wed, 2007-11-28 at 09:44 -0600, Tom Browder wrote:
>   
>> I haven't worked with COBOL for twenty years.  Can someone recommend a
>> good, modern COBOL text book?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> -Tom
>>
>> Tom Browder
>> Niceville, Florida
>> USA
>>     
Personally, I found the MURACH (publisher) books quite good. "Structured 
COBOL ..." is the first title that occurs to me.

But I'm really jumping in here from excitement at seeing some activity 
on the list. The last time I had looked, Sourceforge listed the project 
as inactive. This mail sent me back to the happy discovery that work has 
restarted.

So, could someone bring me up to date? And tell me how I can help.

Work on the project stopped for a number of years, for good but
uninteresting reasons, but I have recently started work again. 

In fact I left my job recently to work on the project. I took a holiday
first and I'm now working full time on the project. I plan for work on
the project for at least six months and I think that will suffice to get
a substantial part of the work done. 

My plan is to get a minimal subset running and then put it up on
sourceforge, at which point I will be inviting others to help.

Our first attempt produced 80,000 lines of code and I would estimate we
were about 30% of the way there. I have started again with a different
approach using LISP as the main language for the compiler front end
instead of C. The interface to the GCC back end will still be in C but
that will only be a few thousand lines. The runtime will be in a
combination of C and a subset of COBOL. With this approach I think the
whole thing will be less than 70,000 lines of code. Quite a bit of the
code fromt he first attempt is reusable.

Expiriments I have done indicate that LISP programs require only about
10-20% of the lines of code of a comparable C program with almost
proportionate productivity improvements and reductions in bugs, and with
similar performance. LISP is not just for processing lists; it is a very
powerful programming language and good open source implementations exist
(eg SBCL, GCL, CMU Lisp). Some of these run on Windows as well as Unix
variants. There are a lot of good books, documentation and other
training materials about LISP available on the internet.

The opportunities I see for people to help will be

COBOL Skills:
* Test your COBOL programs and submit bug reports.
* Work on the some of the runtime routines.

Lisp skills
* Work on the compiler front end (parser etc).

C Skills
* Work on the runtime routines.

C Skills and GCC Internals skills
* Work on the GCC back end interface.

As this is a Free Software Foundation project it will be necessary for
anyone who makes more than a very small contribution to legally assign
the copyright to the FSF, and to get a waiver from their employer or
school or college as well.

I will issue more updates as I progress, at least on a monthly basis.

Regards,
Tim Josling

On Thu, 2007-11-29 at 10:48 -0500, David A. Cobb wrote:
> >>
> >> Tom Browder
> >> Niceville, Florida
> >> USA
> >>     
> Personally, I found the MURACH (publisher) books quite good. "Structured 
> COBOL ..." is the first title that occurs to me.
> 
> But I'm really jumping in here from excitement at seeing some activity 
> on the list. The last time I had looked, Sourceforge listed the project 
> as inactive. This mail sent me back to the happy discovery that work has 
> restarted.
> 
> So, could someone bring me up to date? And tell me how I can help.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> SF.Net email is sponsored by: The Future of Linux Business White Paper
> from Novell.  From the desktop to the data center, Linux is going
> mainstream.  Let it simplify your IT future.
> http://altfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/8857-50307-18918-4
> _______________________________________________
> Cobolforgcc-users mailing list
> Cob...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cobolforgcc-users

tim wrote:
> Work on the project stopped for a number of years, for good but
> uninteresting reasons, but I have recently started work again. 
>   
Hooray!
> I have started again with a different
> approach using LISP as the main language for the compiler front end
> instead of C. 
That's nearly as exciting as discovering the project is awake again.  It 
will be very good to see how LISP applies here.
> LISP is not just for processing lists; it is a very
> powerful programming language and good open source implementations exist
> (eg SBCL, GCL, CMU Lisp). 
>   
Of any, GCL looks best at first glance because it allows to compile 
rather than producing code that is still very close to being interpreted.
> The opportunities I see for people to help will be
>
> COBOL Skills:
> * Test your COBOL programs and submit bug reports.
> * Work on the some of the runtime routines.
>   
OK. I've got years & years of COBOL experience -- but the code isn't 
available to me.
> Lisp skills
> * Work on the compiler front end (parser etc).
>   
And here, too, I may be able to help.
> C Skills
> * Work on the runtime routines.
>
> C Skills and GCC Internals skills
> * Work on the GCC back end interface.
>   
I'll watch.