Re: [Fwd: gnubol: Record delimiter clause and parse order]

[Tim Josling <tej@melbpc.org.au>]

Ted,
See below,
Tim Josling

"Theodore J. Seward, Jr." wrote:
> 
> Tim,
> 
> 1.  How do I upload the software?
> 

http://www.geocities.com/timjosling/cobol.html

Read the doco that's there and download the software. You will
need linux and GCC source to compile it if you want to do that.

> 2.  Are there extra standards beyond the GNU standards that were
> established for the COBOL compiler routines that I should follow,
> e.g. special arguments that should be present, debugging options,
> special routine naming conventions, etc.?
> 

Not really. Keep it 

- as simple as possible
- able to fully support the standard and report any use of
extensions, and to turn off any extensions. Eg I have a keyword
attribute table to pick which keywords to support in which
dialects.
- testable. A test for every feature/boundary condition/error
condition.

Have a look at www.xprogramming.com for some more ideas.

In the compiler I seperate the parsing, validation of the parse
tree and the code generation. If you see any code in the ocmpiler
that looks stupid, ask me because there may be a reason. 

> 3.  Since VB file record lengths are stored in binary, they will have to
> be transferred to and from an IBM mainframe in binary.  Trying to
> translate them to ASCII on transfer would destroy the descriptor words.
> With this in mind, I could supply you with a separate tool to translate
> ASCII / EBCDIC.  I guess it should have the ability for the user to
> indicate where IBM packed decimal and binary (fixed & floating) are
> present in the records so they can be converted as well.  Any comments
> on this?  Perhaps the user parameters should be in the form something
> like a COBOL record layout so it knows the exact locations, e.g. input
> "PIC S9(4) COMP-3" to "PIC S9(4)".

Bill Klein had some good ideas about this.

> 
> 4.  I just downloaded the "GNU Coding Standards" by Richard Stallman,
> last updated June 1, 2000 at:  http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards.html

You got it.
> 
> 5.  I just downloaded the LGPL as you specified, which I assumed was the
> "GNU Lesser General Public License",  Version 2.1, dated February 1999
> at:  http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/lesser.html
> 

You got it.

> Thanks Much - Ted Seward
> 
> Tim Josling wrote:

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