README.md

cobol-playground

This is a place where I experiment with cobol (GnuCOBOL 3.1.2). Find it here.

Setting up an WSL2 environment

The WSL2 should be set up with, for example, ubuntu for the next steps.

More on that from microsoft: Install Linux on Windows with WSL.

mkdir -p "~/software"
cd "~/software"

wget "https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnucobol/files/gnucobol/3.1/gnucobol-3.1.2.tar.gz/download" "gnucobol-3.1.2.tar.gz"
tar -xvf "gnucobol-3.1.2.tar.gz"

cd "gnucobol-3.1.2"

System library dependencies

sudo apt-get install build-essential make git
sudo apt-get install libdb-dev libgmp3-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libxml2-dev libcjson-dev

Build configuration

./configure

configure: GnuCOBOL Configuration:
configure:  CC                gcc
configure:  CFLAGS            -O2 -pipe -finline-functions -fsigned-char -Wall -Wwrite-strings -Wmissing-prototypes -Wno-format-y2k
configure:  LDFLAGS            -Wl,-z,relro,-z,now,-O1
configure:  COB_CC            gcc
configure:  COB_CFLAGS         -pipe -I/usr/local/include -Wno-unused -fsigned-char -Wno-pointer-sign
configure:  COB_LDFLAGS
configure:  COB_DEBUG_FLAGS   -ggdb3 -fasynchronous-unwind-tables
configure:  COB_LIBS          -L${exec_prefix}/lib -lcob -lm
configure:  COB_CONFIG_DIR    ${datarootdir}/gnucobol/config
configure:  COB_COPY_DIR      ${datarootdir}/gnucobol/copy
configure:  COB_LIBRARY_PATH  ${exec_prefix}/lib/gnucobol
configure:  COB_OBJECT_EXT    o
configure:  COB_MODULE_EXT    so
configure:  COB_EXE_EXT
configure:  COB_SHARED_OPT    -shared
configure:  COB_PIC_FLAGS     -fPIC -DPIC
configure:  COB_EXPORT_DYN    -Wl,--export-dynamic
configure:  COB_STRIP_CMD     strip --strip-unneeded
configure:  Dynamic loading:                             System
configure:  Use gettext for international messages:      yes
configure:  Use fcntl for file locking:                  yes
configure:  Use math multiple precision library:         gmp
configure:  Use curses library for screen I/O:           ncursesw
configure:  Use Berkeley DB for INDEXED I/O:             yes
configure:  Used for XML I/O:                            libxml2
configure:  Used for JSON I/O:                           cjson

Next Steps

make

# very important to make sure everything works fine, around 700 internal tests
make check
# run against a NIST COBOL-85 test suite
make test

sudo make install
# this will likely print some warning about a symbolic link
sudo ldconfig

Also edit ~/.profile:

# ...

# set up cobol custom build
SW_GNUCOBOL_PATH="$HOME/software/gnucobol-3.1.2"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$SW_GNUCOBOL_PATH/lib"
PATH="$PATH:$SW_GNUCOBOL_PATH/bin"

Reference

• GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
• GnuCOBOL FAQ
• Blog Post by Michael Hönnig "Try Cobol in 2020 on your PC"
• There are PDF hard-copies attached to this repository, taken from the official documentation.
  • GnuCOBOL 3.2 Programmers Guide
  • GnuCOBOL 3.2 Quick Reference
  • GnuCOBOL 3.2 Sample Programs

Code editor

There are many editors out there (Notepad++, Vim to name some). The extensions for cobol supported available for Visual Studio Code provide sufficient highlighting and linting. Use the "COBOL" by "BitLang".

A simple program

A simple Hello world program may look like this:

       >> SOURCE FORMAT IS FREE
      *> GnuCOBOL - "Hello world" example
       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
       PROGRAM-ID.     hello-world.
       AUTHOR.         machinateur.
       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
           display "Hello world".
           STOP RUN.

See also hello-world.cob.

License

It's MIT.

The GnuCOBOL software itself is licensed under GNU GPLv3.