Re: [Tiny-cobol-users] htcobol can not compile, hang-up

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

m_amass wrote:
...
> i have some problem wit compiling my third Cobol source, htcobol hang-up.
> The source is from one book from 1988.  (See attachment.)
> ... 
> Is the problem only on my system or is it a generic problem?

This a bug related to the TC COBOL grammar and Bison.
It occurs once in a while with no apparent reason or warning.

The syntax in question is 'CONSOLE IS CRT' in the 'SPECIAL-NAMES'
clause. TC does NOT currently support this syntax.
TC should just trap this as an error and print the error message.

When the TC COBOL grammar is compiled with YACC193 [1] (Berkeley's YACC
version 1.9.3), the same syntax will print an error message and exit
normally.
I have no idea how to fix this bug, other than suggesting using YACC193.

Just change the code as follows and it should compile and run.
SPECIAL-NAMES.
  DECIMAL-POINT IS COMMA
* CONSOLE IS CRT
  .
*INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION.
*FILE-CONTROL.
...
VERARBEITUNG SECTION.
VER-1000.
*DISPLAY SPACE UPON CRT.
...

BTW, if you using the fixed COBOL source format, to avoid problems add
the '-F' or '--fixed' option to the command line.

Hope this helps.

1) Berkeley's YACC version 1.9.3 (byacc) can be downloaded only from the
TC 'snapshot' web page.