COBOL Language Interest Group

Some people on the compilers list have been interested in COBOL. Anyone
that would like to be involved in writing a specification for COBOL should
let me know so I can obtain their input on the subject.


Part of the information should consist of what is a "minimum" standard,
i.e. what features of the Identification, Environment, Data and Procedure
divisions should be required in the initial specification. What features
are the ones "you can't live without."


There are some features that are nice to have but aren't mandatory because
they are available elsewhere and could either be implemented by the
compiler or using alternate programs, i.e. Report Writer and Sort.


There are some features that it would be nice to have in COBOL that might
be specific to certain environments, i.e. having a specification in a
COBOL program that indicates a particular file is a DBASE format file on a
PC or any other system that can support DBASE's .DBF file format. This
would also include the DBASE index format.


Some people may want to support other file types for binary files and
other things, or the method of doing Packed Decimal (COMP-3).


Since I've heard a number of people are interested, I'd like to hear from
anyone who is interested in hearing about COBOL or wants to make
suggestions. Please send responses to me at


        TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM


Thank You, Paul Robinson
[Many people have asked about a free yacc grammar for Cobol, but nobody's
offered one. Other than hacking around some of the lexical oddities of
Cobol, I'd think that it'd be straightforward to do so long as you had a
version of yacc that could handle the enormous number of reserved words in
a Cobol grammar, such as Berkeley yacc. -John]
--

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