GnuCOBOL (formerly OpenCOBOL) is a free, modern COBOL compiler. GnuCOBOL implements a substantial part of the COBOL 85, X/Open COBOL and newer ISO COBOL standards (2002, 2014, 2023), as well as many extensions included in other COBOL compilers (IBM COBOL, MicroFocus COBOL, ACUCOBOL-GT and others).

GnuCOBOL translates COBOL into C and internally compiles the translated code using a native C compiler.
Build COBOL programs on various platforms, including GNU/Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. GnuCOBOL has also been built on HP/UX, z/OS, SPARC, RS6000, AS/400, along with other combinations of machines and operating systems.

Copyright 2001-2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

The cobc compiler is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the FSF; either version 3, or (at your option) any later version.

The libcob run time support source tree is licensed under the GNU LGPL.

Features

  • a nicely complete implementation of COBOL with nearly seamless C integration
  • passing over 9700 of 9748 NIST COBOL 85 test suite tests
  • passing over 3700 tests in nearly 1300 internal test groups
  • dialect support for COBOL85, X/Open COBOL, COBOL2002, COBOL2014, MicroFocus, IBM, MVS, ACUCOBOL-GT, RM/COBOL, BS2000, GCOS (Bull)
  • supports ORGANIZATION INDEXED along with REPORT SECTION, SCREEN SECTION, FUNCTION-ID
  • support for JSON GENERATE and XML GENERATE (XML PARSE pending)
  • almost full support of the COBOL 2023 Compiler Directing Facility feature set
  • EXEC SQL preprocessors available for PostgreSQL, Firebird, ODBC, DB2
  • ASCII, EBCDIC, little endian, big endian. A build published for z/OS OMVS/USS
  • multiple source level debuggers available (GDB frontends or extensions as well as completely separate projects)
  • compiler built with GNU Autotools and GCC, also successfully builds with LLVM clang, VisualStudio or others
  • direct access to almost all C libraries, and even more with the C++ base
  • multiple screen libraries available including Java (AWT/SWING) and GTK+ based
  • code integrating Ada, Guile, Lua, Rexx, Javascript, Python, and others, published
  • CGI capable and desktop ready
  • compiler and runtime messages translated; English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Dutch, German, more to come

Project Samples

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License

GNU Library or Lesser General Public License version 2.0 (LGPLv2), GNU General Public License version 2.0 (GPLv2), GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3), GNU Library or Lesser General Public License version 3.0 (LGPLv3)

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Additional Project Details

Operating Systems

Linux, BSD, Mac, Windows

Languages

English, Japanese, Spanish

Intended Audience

Developers

User Interface

Web-based, Console/Terminal, Command-line, GTK+, Tk

Programming Language

COBOL, C

Database Environment

Berkeley/Sleepycat/Gdbm (DBM), Other file-based DBMS

Related Categories

COBOL Software Development Software, COBOL Compilers, C Software Development Software, C Compilers

Registered

2001-09-03