Most modern programming languages give a way to add inline comments, generally those that use a newline character to indicate the end of a comment, and an arbitrary delimiter or sequence of tokens ...

WORKING-STORAGE. FIRST-STRING PIC X(15) VALUE SPACES. SECOND-STRING PIC X(15) VALUE SPACES. OUTPUT-STRING PIC X(31) VALUE SPACES. If FIRST-NAME = 'JON SNOW, ' and LAST-NAME = 'KNOWS NOTHING. '...

I'm completely new to COBOL, and I'm wondering: There seems to be no difference between DISPLAY "foo" and DISPLAY "foo". What does the dot at the end of a line actually do? When should I u...

How do you use the RecordEditor to Generate Java~JRecord code from a Cobol Copybook to read/write a Binary EBCDIC Mainframe File. This a Question and answer to try an prevent some poor/misleading ...

I'm trying to do the linkage of a hello world in cobol, as in this tutorial, I can compile the program and get the new member in project.group.OBJ successfully, but when I link it with LINK project...

I have confusion regarding COBOL data types. Like in many interviews it is asked to explain the difference between COMP-3 and COMP... what is the exact difference? what is the meaning of usage mode...

I have an ascii file that is a dump of data from a cobol based system. There is a field that the docs say is PIC S9(3)V9(7).. Here are two examples of the fields in hex (and ascii) and the result...

This blog post https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/04/20/brush-up-your-cobol-why-is-a-60-year-old-language-suddenly-in-demand/?cb=1 says "You can’t write a compiler or a kernel module in COBOL" I...

We are planning to replace IBM MQ with Apache Kafka to implement pub-sub use-cases in future. Currently Mainframe(running Z/OS) applications are written using COBOL programming language & pushi...

Why does COBOL have both SECTION and PARAGRAPH? Can anybody explain why the designers of COBOL created both SECTIONs and PARAGRAPHs? These have been around since the initial release of COBOL so I ...

I've been searching for s9(5)v99 but got different information and not really clear. Could someone shows how or the formula to convert. thanks

I have a task to convert COBOL code to .NET. Are there any converters available? I am trying to understand COBOL code in high level. I have a trouble understanding the COBOL code. Is there any flow...

I am trying to understand how the COBOL variables with COMP Usage clause stores values. I tried one example as below 01 VAR14 PIC S9(5) USAGE COMP. MOVE 12345 TO VAR14 DISPLAY VAR14 In SPO...

I'm entirely new to COBOL. I have a small COBOL program and a small C file. According to this article: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSLTBW_2.1.0/com.ibm.zos.v2r1.ceea400/sdtpt.htm...

I have this very simple dummy COBOL program which does a dummy COMPUTE and displays the result. ID DIVISION. PROGRAM-ID. DUMMYPGM. DATA DIVISION. WORKING-STORAGE SECTION. 01 NUM-A PIC 9(3) VA...

I'm new to COBOL and I have been trying to read record information from a text file that is an output from the table. Most non-comp data-types i'm okay with, it's the 'COMP' ones i'm getting stuck...

What happens if you add a copybook to linkage section instead of adding it to a working-storage section in a sub-program?

Using GnuCOBOL 2.2.0 on Ubuntu 18.10. Working through 'Beginning COBOL for Programmers' by Michael Coughlan. GnuCOBOL has been compiling the book's examples without trouble up until Chapter 9, when...

I was checking Microsoft's Visual Studio page just now and in the advertisements sidebar I suddenly saw an incredible advertisement: "Net Express is a COBOL development environment for extending...

I've seen the following paragraph naming structure lots of times: nnnn-PARAGRAPH-NAME. Where nnnn stands for a 4 digit number. Here is a complete example: 0000-MAINLINE. PERFORM 1000-INITIAL...

I have the following code to connect to an external DB inside a COBOL program: MOVE 'I2SFG04' TO WK-USER MOVE '12345' TO WK-PASS EXEC SQL CONNECT TO :WK-EXT-MACHINE USER :WK-USER USING :WK-...

I'm using AS400 and I have been asked to call a web service from the green screen. How can thisbe this achieved? Any sample COBOL or CL code would be very helpful.

I can't seem to get this one part right. I was given a input file with a bunch of names, some of which I need to skip, with extra information on each one. I was trying use ANDs and ORs to skip over...

I am trying to programm some kind of Caesar Cipher in Cobol. But somehow I get the following compile error: Numeric function "INTEGER FUNCTION ORD" was not allowed in this context. This error ...

I have a very long running COBOL program that runs randomly at various times during the day. The Console operator wants to be notified when it starts up and have the program wait so they can go get...