Re: [Tiny-cobol-users] Re: CALL 'SYSTEM' (bash)

[David E. <de...@us...>]

Burke Cabaniss wrote:

 > Burke Cabaniss asks:
 >
 > In a RedHat Linux environment I need to CALL bash and
 > pass the commands it will execute; Linux programs and
 > other scripts.
 > With my current COBOL, this is
 > CALL 'SYSTEM' USING [ dataname | literal ] .
 > I would  guess this might be done by a "canned" C executable,
 > but am not a C programmer. I am a COBOL programmer in many
 > environments for 40 years.
 > `bash` capabilities greatly expand what I could do in previous
 > environments.
 >
 > My COBOL has other useful CALL "canned" modules, such as one to return
 > (pass) the string value of a bash environment variable, and the number
 > and length of the USING parameters passed to a called COBOL program.
 > Note that bash itself returns only an integer, if I understand.
 >
 > I do not find any of this treated in TC or other COBOL documentation.
 > Please advise me about it.

Yes you can call basically call any program or library function.

Example:

01 VAR1.
   05 FILLER X(15) VALUE 'ls -l some-dir'
   05 FILLER X(01) VALUE x'00'
...
CALL 'system' USING VAR1.

Note that 'system' is C library call, and like any C string should be
null terminated.

Hope this helps.