COBOL and code

WE have a program a programmer wrote for us. He is long gone.

We hired another one but it appears the source for the file is misisng or he
took it with him. I understand there are decompilers out there for this sort
of thing. Is there a free or cheap one I could use.

The environment is RISC6000 running AIX 5.1

I know about "de-compilers" for IBM mainframe (MVS) COBOL's - but none for A
IX
5.1.

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"scorpion53061" <scorpion_53061@nospamhereeveryahoo.com> wrote in message
news:415db8d9$1@news.mcleodusa.net...
> WE have a program a programmer wrote for us. He is long gone.
>
> We hired another one but it appears the source for the file is misisng or 
he
> took it with him. I understand there are decompilers out there for this so
rt
> of thing. Is there a free or cheap one I could use.
>
> The environment is RISC6000 running AIX 5.1
>

would you tell me what you know....


perhaps they will work. It is standard MicroFocus COBOL.


"William M. Klein" <wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:Q2j7d.373792$yk.62946@news.easynews.com...
>I know about "de-compilers" for IBM mainframe (MVS) COBOL's - but none for
>AIX 5.1.
>
> --
> Bill Klein
> wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
> "scorpion53061" <scorpion_53061@nospamhereeveryahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:415db8d9$1@news.mcleodusa.net... 
>
>

On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:42:50 -0500, "scorpion53061"
<scorpion_53061@nospamhereeveryahoo.com> wrote:

>WE have a program a programmer wrote for us. He is long gone.
>
>We hired another one but it appears the source for the file is misisng or h
e
>took it with him. I understand there are decompilers out there for this sor
t
>of thing. Is there a free or cheap one I could use.
>
>The environment is RISC6000 running AIX 5.1

What compiler? Brand name is good enough.

Was it compiled with the debugger option on?

A decompiler cannot recover information that doesn't exist in machine
code. Without debugging information, you'll get a program that
compiles but has meaningless names.

No - it doesn't work for Micro Focus COBOL.  Although with Micro Focus, if y
ou
have an .idy file, then you *may* be able to get source out of that.

To get current information on the IBM mainframe product, see:

http://www.source-recovery.com/



--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"scorpion53061" <scorpion_53061@nospamhereeveryahoo.com> wrote in message
news:415dd0a7$1@news.mcleodusa.net...
> would you tell me what you know....
>
>
> perhaps they will work. It is standard MicroFocus COBOL.
>
>
> "William M. Klein" <wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote in message
> news:Q2j7d.373792$yk.62946@news.easynews.com... 
>
>

"Robert Wagner" <robert@wagner.net.yourmammaharvests> wrote in message
 news:p9mrl0tbh966526ncm4t1adi3k2tf2ktb4@
4ax.com...
> On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:42:50 -0500, "scorpion53061"
> <scorpion_53061@nospamhereeveryahoo.com> wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> A decompiler cannot recover information that doesn't exist in machine
> code. Without debugging information, you'll get a program that
> compiles but has meaningless names.
>

For a company that does exactly what Robert says can't be done (but as far a
s I
know is limited to IBM mainframe COBOL missing source code), see:

http://www.source-recovery.com/


--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com

On Fri, 01 Oct 2004 22:38:40 GMT, "William M. Klein"
<wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote:

>"Robert Wagner" <robert@wagner.net.yourmammaharvests> wrote in message
> news:p9mrl0tbh966526ncm4t1adi3k2tf2ktb4@
4ax.com... 
><snip> 
>
>For a company that does exactly what Robert says can't be done (but as far 
as I
>know is limited to IBM mainframe COBOL missing source code), see:
>
>http://www.source-recovery.com/

A glance at their marketing demo confirms everything I said.

http://www.source-recovery.com/srcn-coboleq.html

On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 16:24:16 -0500, "scorpion53061"
<scorpion_53061@nospamhereeveryahoo.com> wrote:

>It is standard MicroFocus COBOL.

You're out of luck. The debug file (.idy) doesn't contain source
names.

Robert Wagner wrote:

>On Fri, 01 Oct 2004 22:38:40 GMT, "William M. Klein"
><wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>
> 
>
>A glance at their marketing demo confirms everything I said.
>
>http://www.source-recovery.com/srcn-coboleq.html
>
>
Robert,
My company used this technology for recovering a couple of lost programs
at Y2K time.  If you send them record descriptions that use the names
you want to have in the program, they will "fit" the generated names to
the "desired" names.  While this does not fix everything, it can
certainly help.

You are left with procedure-names and some items like level-66,
level-77, and level-88 to fix yourself, but it will give you a leg up on
the job of understanding a program with lost source code.

All of that said, while we had a number of executable programs for which
we could not easily find the source, we did find over 90% after more
exhaustive searches.  (In most cases, the programs did not follow our
rules of having the source program and executable use the same name, or
the source never got transferred from old libraries to the newest ones.

I would try hard to track down that original programmer.  It is almost
certain that she / he left the source code behind, and maybe the
original poster simply doesn't know where to look.  If the programmer
didn't leave the code behind (a bad practice for both him and the
company), she / he may well have a copy.

I know about "de-compilers" for IBM mainframe (MVS) COBOL's - but none for A
IX
5.1.

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"scorpion53061" <scorpion_53061@nospamhereeveryahoo.com> wrote in message
news:415db8d9$1@news.mcleodusa.net...
> WE have a program a programmer wrote for us. He is long gone.
>
> We hired another one but it appears the source for the file is misisng or 
he
> took it with him. I understand there are decompilers out there for this so
rt
> of thing. Is there a free or cheap one I could use.
>
> The environment is RISC6000 running AIX 5.1
>