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  • Re: COBOL compilers (Re: naughty Pascal)

    From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jan 7 20:21:19 2026
    On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 14:11:10 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

    But trying to parse free-form text and do macro expansions with
    string substitutions ... disaster in COBOL. Hard enough in FORTRAN.

    Hard to see the point in an assembler without such features, though.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Peter Flass@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jan 7 19:16:03 2026
    On 1/7/26 13:21, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
    On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 14:11:10 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

    But trying to parse free-form text and do macro expansions with
    string substitutions ... disaster in COBOL. Hard enough in FORTRAN.

    Hard to see the point in an assembler without such features, though.

    I did a COBOL program to do string substitutions. The idea was that it
    read a COBOL program written possibly by a blind hacker and substituted variable names with longer, standardized ones.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Thu Jan 8 02:24:36 2026
    On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 19:16:03 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

    I did a COBOL program to do string substitutions. The idea was that it
    read a COBOL program written possibly by a blind hacker and substituted variable names with longer, standardized ones.

    Did it understand the rules of IN-scoping?

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Peter Flass@3:633/10 to All on Thu Jan 8 07:41:03 2026
    On 1/7/26 19:24, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
    On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 19:16:03 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

    I did a COBOL program to do string substitutions. The idea was that it
    read a COBOL program written possibly by a blind hacker and substituted
    variable names with longer, standardized ones.

    Did it understand the rules of IN-scoping?

    COBOL had no concept of "scope" back then.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Thu Jan 8 20:02:49 2026
    On Thu, 8 Jan 2026 07:41:03 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

    On 1/7/26 19:24, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

    On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 19:16:03 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

    I did a COBOL program to do string substitutions. The idea was that it
    read a COBOL program written possibly by a blind hacker and substituted
    variable names with longer, standardized ones.

    Did it understand the rules of IN-scoping?

    COBOL had no concept of "scope" back then.

    I was referring to this:

    8.4.1.1 Qualification

    Qualification is used to allow unique reference of user names.
    Qualification is the specification of superordinate names from the
    hierarchy to which a user-defined name belongs. The superordinate
    names are called qualifiers. Identical user-defined names may be
    specified in a source unit; however, uniqueness shall be established
    through qualification for each user- defined name explicitly
    referenced, except as specified in rules 2 through 6. All available
    qualifiers need not be specified so long as uniqueness is established.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Dan Espen@3:633/10 to All on Fri Jan 9 14:22:34 2026
    Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> writes:

    But trying to parse free-form text and do macro expansions with
    string substitutions ... disaster in COBOL. Hard enough in FORTRAN.

    Using "OCCURS DEPENDING ON" COBOL easily processes variable length,
    variably located strings.

    Not much of a disaster IMO.

    --
    Dan Espen

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Fri Jan 9 22:12:26 2026
    On Fri, 09 Jan 2026 14:22:34 -0500, Dan Espen wrote:

    Using "OCCURS DEPENDING ON" COBOL easily processes variable length,
    variably located strings.

    Up to a limit, always, e.g.

    OCCURS [ integer-1 TO ] integer-2 TIMES [ DEPENDING ON data-name-1 ]

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Dan Espen@3:633/10 to All on Sat Jan 10 12:18:13 2026
    Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

    On Fri, 09 Jan 2026 14:22:34 -0500, Dan Espen wrote:

    Using "OCCURS DEPENDING ON" COBOL easily processes variable length,
    variably located strings.

    Up to a limit, always, e.g.

    OCCURS [ integer-1 TO ] integer-2 TIMES [ DEPENDING ON data-name-1 ]

    Well beyond any reasonable limit.
    DATA-NAME-1 can be the largest number format the compiler supports and INTEGER-2 the max value.

    --
    Dan Espen

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Sat Jan 10 20:46:38 2026
    On Sat, 10 Jan 2026 12:18:13 -0500, Dan Espen wrote:

    Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

    On Fri, 09 Jan 2026 14:22:34 -0500, Dan Espen wrote:

    Using "OCCURS DEPENDING ON" COBOL easily processes variable
    length, variably located strings.

    Up to a limit, always, e.g.

    OCCURS [ integer-1 TO ] integer-2 TIMES [ DEPENDING ON data-name-1 ]

    Well beyond any reasonable limit.

    I think you?ll find that the implementation reserves space for the
    maximum specified value. So this is not dynamic allocation, by any
    means.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)