[Info-vax] wrong file format

[Chris Townley]

On 01/01/2021 16:55, Dirk Munk wrote:
> Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 1/1/2021 10:46 AM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>>
>>> Yes indeed. And all those files created by those Cobol programs can only
>>> be used by other Cobol programs created by that compiler.
>>
>> I've got to challenge this statement.  The files are just data, and 
>> many compilers can produce code that could use the data.  Might 
>> require some special coding, but, it's possible.
>>
>>
> 
> No, the files do not just contain data. They contain indexes, pointers 
> etc., and you have to be able to use them.

I managed it. We had a VMS application written (externally) in COBOL 
with massive data files. Every month I exported to non-packed files, and 
stripped out the data I needed for reporting using DCL

Worked for me!

Chris