Re: gnubol: Anyone actually working on Cobol

[Fred Mobach <fred@mobach.nl>]

Tim Josling wrote:

> My strategy will be as follows:
>
> * Do nucleus level one first and gradually expand.
>
> * Try and get the key things right so it can then be
> incrementally grown. By whoever wants to contribute.
>
> * Generate code using GCC's back end from day one ie cobol to
> machine code, not cobol to c. The GCC back end supports every
> platform known to man so this is portable enough.
>
> * Function first, efficiency later. Serious effort to be standard
> conformant.
>
> * Target IBM mainframe compatibility but with native data types
> (ie I am not going to emulate big endian binary arithmetic on
> Intel).

Native data types won't be the problem, but we will support the well known Cobol
numeric data types DISPLAY, COMP-3 (packed decimal) and COMP[-1] (binary). Also
don't forget those data type can be used on sequential files like tape files and
has to be supported also. But that's only a job for the run-time system
(library).


> A project like this will always get its fair share of blowhards
> with lots of ideas but who don't contribute any code. As linux
> Torvalds said 'show us the code'!.
>
> Much of the compiler has to be in C for various reasons and a lot
> of those who would contribute only know COBOL, so it is important
> to get a basic cobol thing going so those people can contribute
> by writing cobol eg for a lot of the verb support routines.

I know you're pointing here to the contributions I (among others) have to do.
I'll love it :-).

Regards,

fred Mobach



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