Re: Cobol language dictionary page -- assignment complete?

<docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:dj1h87$aih$1@reader2.panix.com...
> In article <qiX4f.62491$K91.29552@twister.nyroc.rr.com>,
> Christine Frayda <cfrayda@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
> 
>
> It's usually much faster if someone else does your homework for you, sure!
>
> DD

And thanks to the group for the help with my homework!  (I don't get paid
for this, afterall.)

Please take all of your sharp wits to the web page to critique our work. --
Constructive criticism will be accepted most quickly. :)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ Softw...y:COBOL


It is a wiki, so you are welcome to fix problems in place too,
Chris

Christine Frayda wrote:
> <docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:dj1h87$aih$1@reader2.panix.com.
.
> 
>
>
> And thanks to the group for the help with my homework!  (I don't get paid
> for this, afterall.)
>
> Please take all of your sharp wits to the web page to critique our work. -
-
> Constructive criticism will be accepted most quickly. :)
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ Softw...y:COB
OL
>
> It is a wiki, so you are welcome to fix problems in place too,
>     Chris

HA!  Most of the items on that page come from me, in a private email
to Christine Frayda.  Since I know next to nothing about
object-oriented programming, or C++ for that matter, and my point of
view might be rather limited, it would probably be a very good thing
for some other COBOL programmers to jump in and correct my flippant
comments.  And possibly correct my examples, which were written very
hastily without any kind of syntax checking.

We wouldn't want our favorite programming language to be
misrepresented in the Wiki world, would we?

With kindest regards,

--
http://arnold.trembley.home.att.net/


Arnold Trembley wrote:
>
> HA!  Most of the items on that page come from me, in a private email to
> Christine Frayda.  Since I know next to nothing about object-oriented
> programming, or C++ for that matter, and my point of view might be
> rather limited, it would probably be a very good thing for some other
> COBOL programmers to jump in and correct my flippant comments.  And
> possibly correct my examples, which were written very hastily without
> any kind of syntax checking.
>
> We wouldn't want our favorite programming language to be misrepresented
> in the Wiki world, would we?
>

Well Arnold, a valiant initial attempt at OO - BUT........, there's just
so damn much to cover. I've never checked, perhaps Bill or Chuck have -
but I doubt that OO has added more than 20 - 30 RESERVED WORDS to COBOL,
including extensions like :-

Procedural - set ContinueProgram to true

OO        - set ThisNewObject to thisOldObject *> you can't MOVE objects

In my judgment, OO COBOL is more about a Conceptual approach, using a
combination of the OO RESERVED WORDS above. Not that it's put forward as
an idea, but I'm a strong advocate of REUSE associated with
polymorphism. (E.g. work out the general logic to retrieve different
elements in a collection, and with minor twiddling, the methods can be
applied to any other collection, be they collections of customers,
fruits, cheeses, car parts or whatever). There I go - both F/J and M/F
have collections, which as yet are not part of the J4 OO Standard !

If you think on it - why bother with a 'newie' like OO unless it's going
to give you some program development advantages. On the minus side -
design-wise you have got to figure out your support classes in advance,
which takes time when you are new to the topic - but when you get there
you quickly avoid the onerous task of having to think how to handle,
files, their file-status errors, SQL Tables and their SQLSTATE/ERRORs,
GUIs the Web, or whatever - you have these as a set of 'canned' or
'template' classes which then draw as necessary on utility classes
provided by the COBOL vendor.


My 'utility' classes never go wrong, but they can hiccup because of the
messages, (parameters) I send to them - and that's no different to
Procedural:-

CALL Program2 using a, c, d

when Program2 is anticipating receiving a,b,c,d
and returning e (not mentioned above)

No. Be much braver if I sat down and tried my hand at writing a book on
OO COBOL ! Then like Thane, once a month I could take my wife out to a
burger-joint on the royalties :-)

Jimmy

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 03:38:18 GMT, "James J. Gavan"
<jgavandeletethis@shaw.ca> wrote:

>No. Be much braver if I sat down and tried my hand at writing a book on
>OO COBOL ! Then like Thane, once a month I could take my wife out to a
>burger-joint on the royalties :-)

I didn't know Thane knew your wife.

"James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletethis@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:KMh7f.287612$oW2.107047@pd7tw1no...

> Well Arnold, a valiant initial attempt at OO - BUT........, there's just
> so damn much to cover. I've never checked, perhaps Bill or Chuck have -
> but I doubt that OO has added more than 20 - 30 RESERVED WORDS to COBOL,
> including extensions like :- ...

I just went through the reserved word lists for the '85 and '02 standards.

The '02 standard *adds* ADDRESS, ALIGNED, ALLOCATE, ANYCASE, AS, B-AND,
B-NOT, B-OR, B-XOR, BASED, BINARY-CHAR, BINARY-DOUBLE, BINARY-LONG,
BINARY-SHORT, BIT, BOOLEAN, CLASS-ID, COL, COLS, COLUMNS,
CONDITION,CONSTANT, CRT, CURSOR, DATA-POINTER, DEFAULT, EC, END-ACCEPT,
END-DISPLAY, EO, EXCEPTION-OBJECT, FACTORY, FLOAT-EXTENDED, FLOAT-LONG,
FLOAT-SHORT, FORMAT, FREE, FUNCTION, FUNCTION-ID, GET, GOBACK, GROUP-USAGE,
INHERITS, INTERFACE, INTERFACE-ID, INVOKE, LOCAL-STORAGE, LOCALE, METHOD,
METHOD-ID, MINUS, NATIONAL, NATIONAL-EDITED, NESTED, NULL, OBJECT,
OBJECT-REFERENCE, OPTIONS, OVERRIDE, PRESENT, PROGRAM-POINTER, PROPERTY,
PROTOTYPE, RAISE, RAISING, RESUME, RETRY, RETURNING, SCREEN, SELF, SHARING,
SOURCES, SUPER, SYSTEM-DEFAULT,  TYPEDEF, UNIVERSAL, UNLOCK,
USER-DEFAULT, VAL-STATUS, VALID, VALIDATE, VALIDATE-STATUS, the operators
"&" (concatenation) and "::" (method invocation), the floating comment
indicator "*>", and the compiler directive indicator ">>".

By my count that's a total of 87 new entries in the reserved word list in
the '02 standard.

The '02 standard *drops* ALTER,  AUTHOR, CLOCK-UNITS, COBOL (!),
DATE-COMPILED, DATE-WRITTEN, DEBUG-CONTENTS, DEBUG-ITEM, DEBUG-LINE,
DEBUG-NAME, DEBUG-SUB-1, DEBUG-SUB-2, DEBUG-SUB-3, ENTER, EVERY,
INSTALLATION, LABEL, MEMORY, MODULES, MULTIPLE, POSITION, PROCEDURES,
PROCEED, REFERENCES, RERUN,  SECURITY, SEGMENT-LIMIT, TAPE, and WORDS for a
total of 29 entries that have been deleted from the reserved word list as it
was in the '85 standard.

I leave it as an exercize for the reader to figure out which of the new
reserved words are properly characterized as directly supporting OO.

> Procedural - set ContinueProgram to true
>
> OO        - set ThisNewObject to thisOldObject *> you can't MOVE objects

Ah, but SET is hardly a new reserved word.

<<There I go - both F/J and M/F have collections, which as yet are not part
of the J4 OO Standard !>>

It is expected that the Collection Class Library proposal (currently WDTR
24717; the most recent update is J4/05-0214, available on
www.cobolportal.com/j4/), will, after a few further minor editorial tweaks,
be submitted as a DTR for international ballot Real Soon Now, and if the
national standards bodies agree, it will apply to the '02 standard.

WG4 has also requested that this TR along with the also-still-being-refined
Native COBOL Syntax for XML processing TR are to be "folded into" the draft
for the 2008 revision to the standard when they've passed their DTR process.
The Finalizer TR, which has already been approved, is also to be
incorporated into the draft.

-Chuck Stevens

Chuck Stevens wrote:
> "James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletethis@shaw.ca> wrote in message
> news:KMh7f.287612$oW2.107047@pd7tw1no...
>
> 
>
>
> I just went through the reserved word lists for the '85 and '02 standards.
>
> The '02 standard *adds* ADDRESS, ALIGNED, ALLOCATE, ANYCASE, AS, B-AND,
> B-NOT, B-OR, B-XOR, BASED, BINARY-CHAR, BINARY-DOUBLE, BINARY-LONG,
> BINARY-SHORT, BIT, BOOLEAN, CLASS-ID, COL, COLS, COLUMNS,
> CONDITION,CONSTANT, CRT, CURSOR, DATA-POINTER, DEFAULT, EC, END-ACCEPT,
> END-DISPLAY, EO, EXCEPTION-OBJECT, FACTORY, FLOAT-EXTENDED, FLOAT-LONG,
> FLOAT-SHORT, FORMAT, FREE, FUNCTION, FUNCTION-ID, GET, GOBACK, GROUP-USAGE
,
> INHERITS, INTERFACE, INTERFACE-ID, INVOKE, LOCAL-STORAGE, LOCALE, METHOD,
> METHOD-ID, MINUS, NATIONAL, NATIONAL-EDITED, NESTED, NULL, OBJECT,
> OBJECT-REFERENCE, OPTIONS, OVERRIDE, PRESENT, PROGRAM-POINTER, PROPERTY,
> PROTOTYPE, RAISE, RAISING, RESUME, RETRY, RETURNING, SCREEN, SELF, SHARING
,
> SOURCES, SUPER, SYSTEM-DEFAULT,  TYPEDEF, UNIVERSAL, UNLOCK,
> USER-DEFAULT, VAL-STATUS, VALID, VALIDATE, VALIDATE-STATUS, the operators
> "&" (concatenation) and "::" (method invocation), the floating comment
> indicator "*>", and the compiler directive indicator ">>".
>
> By my count that's a total of 87 new entries in the reserved word list in
> the '02 standard.
>
> The '02 standard *drops* ALTER,  AUTHOR, CLOCK-UNITS, COBOL (!),
> DATE-COMPILED, DATE-WRITTEN, DEBUG-CONTENTS, DEBUG-ITEM, DEBUG-LINE,
> DEBUG-NAME, DEBUG-SUB-1, DEBUG-SUB-2, DEBUG-SUB-3, ENTER, EVERY,
> INSTALLATION, LABEL, MEMORY, MODULES, MULTIPLE, POSITION, PROCEDURES,
> PROCEED, REFERENCES, RERUN,  SECURITY, SEGMENT-LIMIT, TAPE, and WORDS for 
a
> total of 29 entries that have been deleted from the reserved word list as 
it
> was in the '85 standard.
>
> I leave it as an exercize for the reader to figure out which of the new
> reserved words are properly characterized as directly supporting OO.
>
> 
>
>
> Ah, but SET is hardly a new reserved word.

No, wasn't suggesting it was - but pointing out it's now been 'extended'
to give the additional meaning in OO.

>
> <<There I go - both F/J and M/F have collections, which as yet are not par
t
> of the J4 OO Standard !>>
>
> It is expected that the Collection Class Library proposal (currently WDTR
> 24717; the most recent update is J4/05-0214, available on
> www.cobolportal.com/j4/), will, after a few further minor editorial tweaks
,
> be submitted as a DTR for international ballot Real Soon Now, and if the
> national standards bodies agree, it will apply to the '02 standard.
>
> WG4 has also requested that this TR along with the also-still-being-refine
d
> Native COBOL Syntax for XML processing TR are to be "folded into" the draf
t
> for the 2008 revision to the standard when they've passed their DTR proces
s.
> The Finalizer TR, which has already been approved, is also to be
> incorporated into the draft.
>
>     -Chuck Stevens
>
>

Thanks for your efforts Chuck,

I guess the actual OO 'additives' are even less than I thought, taking
your list. I'm not sure of some, as they may also apply to Procedural,
but the following look like, and most are, definitely OO :-

AS, CLASS-ID, EO, EXCEPTION-OBJECT, FACTORY, INHERITS, INTERFACE,
INTERFACE-ID, INVOKE, METHOD, METHOD-ID, OBJECT (this also has a
Procedural connotation doesn't it ?), OBJECT-REFERENCE, OVERRIDE,
PROPERTY, SELF, SUPER and the *ugly* "::" (method invocation). A
possible 'maybe' without checking - BASED

Above is even smaller than I thought - 19 by my reckoning.  Tends to
support my comment, it's not in the syntax, but how you 'join' the above
together.

Jimmy, Calgary AB

Christine Frayda wrote:

>
> <docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message
> news:dj1h87$aih$1@reader2.panix.com... 
>
> And thanks to the group for the help with my homework!  (I don't get paid
> for this, afterall.)
>
> Please take all of your sharp wits to the web page to critique our work.
> -- Constructive criticism will be accepted most quickly. :)
>
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ Softw...y:COBOL


At a glance the wiki seems to concentrate on the (very interesting) trees
without showing a map of the forest. I would put the following up front:
----------------------------------
COBOL is a computer programming language whose layout and statements were
intended to resemble those of a written business procedure or a military
order. Hence it is divided hierarchically into DIVISIONs, SECTIONs, named
paragraphs, and sentence-like statements, each ending in a period. Although
recent versions have tended to stray from this original model the format
persists.  Here is a skeleton of the structure of a typical COBOL program:
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. MYPROGRAM

(etc.)
-------------------------------------
I'll submit my own skeleton program in a separate posting, with specific
identifiers fictionalized of course.

COBOL doesn't do well when we try to put it in a FORTRAN or C++ context. It
isn't one of those.

But in general we should try to be helpful, even to engineers ;,).

--
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters

Christine Frayda wrote:

>
> <docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message
> news:dj1h87$aih$1@reader2.panix.com... 

I haven't used it much recently but I was active in the language from about
1968 to about 1990 or so.

Here is my skeleton program:
-----------------------------
000010 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000020 PROGRAM-ID. TEMPLATE.
000030 AUTHOR. AUTHOR NAME.
000040 INSTALLATION. COMPANY NAME.
000045               Company address
000050*REMARKS.
000060*    THIS IS A TEMPLATE FOR OPEN COBOL AND HTCOBOL.
000070 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000080
000090 CONFIGURATION SECTION.
000100 SOURCE-COMPUTER.
000110      Linux.
000120 OBJECT-COMPUTER.
000230      Linux.
000140
000150 INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION.
000160 FILE-CONTROL.
000170     SELECT PRINTFILE ASSIGN TO PRINTER.
000180 DATA DIVISION.
000190
000200 FILE SECTION.
000210
000220 WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
000230
000240 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
000250 001-MAIN-PROCEDURE.
000260     DISPLAY "TEMPLATE".
000270          STOP RUN.
-----------------------------------------------


--
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters

In article <ubCdnav6dt8c5sLeRVn-jQ@adelphia.com>,
John Culleton  <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

[snip]

>COBOL doesn't do well when we try to put it in a FORTRAN or C++ context. It
>isn't one of those.
>
>But in general we should try to be helpful, even to engineers ;,).

It just might be that engineers would have been taught a programming
language is a tool to accomplish a task and that no single tool is
appropriate to all jobs... well, then again there's the Swiss Army knife
and (position of reverence) Vise-Grip Locking Pliers... maybe I'll stop
now.

DD

"John Culleton" <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote in message
news:xaudnUUVbZXtesLeRVn-jQ@adelphia.com...

> My skeleton compiles on two current flavors of COBOL, OpenCOBOL and
> TinyCOBOL.

I'm really kind of surprised that neither of your cited compilers seem to
notice that COBOL itself requires both a SELECT and an FD in order fully to
describe any file:  "Each file described in the Data Division must be named
once and only once as file-name in the FILE-CONTROL paragraph.  Each file
sepecified in the file control entry must have a file description entry in
the Data Division."  (ANSI X3.23-1974 page IV-4, 2.1.2.3, The FILE-CONTROL
paragraph, Syntax Rule 2.  The '85 standard echoes this sentiment, as does
the 2002 standard and the draft proposed for 2008.  I even see strong
evidence that this required correspondence exists in the original COBOL-60
specification).

What "value add" do these compilers provide by allowing one without the
other?  In other words, what "feature" useful to the end user or to the
programmer does allowing SELECT without an associated FD represent?

How *should* a compiler diagnose this?  Does this skeleton program include
an extra SELECT statement, or does it have a missing File Description?  If
the shoe were on the other foot -- a FD without an associated SELECT, would
either compiler complain?   If so, why?  If not, why not?

> It is possible to be a good COBOL programmer and yet au courant by
> commenting these paragraphs.

Well, yeah; but I'm a bit at a loss to understand what's "au courant" about
commenting out a SELECT statement in COBOL of *any* vintage just to get the
program to compile ...

-Chuck Stevens