Re: Why is Cobol ignored in compiler textbooks?

preston@dawn.cs.rice.edu (Preston Briggs) writes:
>[how to handle PERFORM which allows the same paragraph to be executed
>nline or as a subroutine]


My approach would be to treat the paragraphs as basic blocks unless they
are performed, and to make separate copies of any chains that are
performed. (Recall that Cobol allows performing a range of paragraphs as
well as one at a time, so the linkage code would have to account for this;
also, I believe that branches out of performed sections are allowed).


I think some of the bigger tasks in implementing a Cobol compiler would be
handling sorting, searching, indexed files, BCD arithmetic, and picture
conversion. These are all basically library problems, which aren't
normally handled in compiler books for ANY language (try finding something
in one of the dragon books on evaluating trig functions or format
conversion).
--

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