Picture This!

24 Jun

The PICTURE Clause… You can define how many characters COBOL uses to store each piece of data. You can also specify what type of characters (alphabetic, numeric, etc) that each data field can hold, and you can set up special … Read More »

Perform vs Go To

21 Jun

Think of the PERFORM verb as a round-trip ticket, and the GO TO statement as a one-way ticket. The PERFORM verb causes execution of a paragraph elsewhere in the program and then immediately returns to its starting point. The GO … Read More »

Hello World

5 Jun

Every programming blog must include a “Hello World” program, right?   Here’s what is required to display “Hello World” in COBOL. Yes, indeed, COBOL is verbose, but still lovable…  

COBOL Basics

1 Jun

OK, so let’s get started…. First of all, COBOL is a compiled language, which means that you will need a COBOL compiler available.  The job of the compiler is to convert the easy to read English language of the program into machine language that the computer … Read More »