[Info-vax] VMS Cobol - GnuCOBOL

[bill]

On 2/22/2023 7:52 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Paul Gavin  <paulgavinco at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Having attempted to move sample code from two flavors of COBOL code (OpenVM=
>> S terminal and HP-UX ANSI format) to GnuCOBOL, I had to modify every commen=
>> t and most continuation lines to get them to compile. Shell script was fair=
>> ly simple to write to fix these issues, but still changed the code. None of=
>> the VMS code used by descriptor calls in the main code, but calls to syste=
>> m services on both side were a pain. Both had database precompiler needs (C=
>> ODASYL and Informix) and those certainly would not work at all.=20
> 
> The comment and continuation issues are addressed with compiler flags.
> Not that updating the code that way might not be a good idea anyway.
> --scott

I wold love to hear why people might think that GnuCOBOL isn't
ready for production use.  And unreadable C intermediate code
is not a valid reason as it was never intended to be read or
modified by humans any more than the RTL in other compilers
or the assembler they generate.

I have done some playing with moving COBOL from IBM, Univac and
even MicroFocus and most take a minimal amount of hand modification
in order to get them running.  Certainly a lot less than re-writting
them in Java.  I don't have any examples from VMS and VMS is famous
for having a lot of stuff handled by their compilers that are not a
part of the language, but I still think it would work just fine.

bill