Author Archives: pdemby

COBOL has a couple  nifty date functions that allow you to add or subtract from a given date. The INTEGER-OF-DATE function converts a date in the Gregorian calendar (formatted as CCYYMMDD) to an integer, allowing you to add to subtract … Read More »

Redefines is a nifty clause that puts two seemingly different things in the same place at the same time.  I use it most commonly to define a field both as a numeric and a text field.  There are some strict … Read More »

Any spreadsheet can be saved as a .csv file, making it very easy for COBOL to use a spreadsheet as input.  This is a very common task in my workplace.  Let’s say we have a comma separated file that looks … Read More »

Its very easy to convert text strings from uppercase to lowercase, (and vice versa), using the INSPECT verb. This simple program populates a text string in uppercase, and then converts it to lowercase. After the INSPECT statement, the value of … Read More »

MOVE is the most widely used verb in COBOL.  This verb is used to copy data from one place to another, but it also leaves the data in the initial location.  Perhaps a better name for this verb would have … Read More »

Way back in the early 80’s when I started developing in COBOL, code was always written entirely in uppercase, due to the limitations of the keypunch machines used in those days.  We’ve come a long way since then, and today’s … Read More »

The INSPECT verb has several options: CONVERTING, REPLACING, and TALLYING. Here’s an example of the CONVERTING format: Let’s say that we have a field called FAVORITE-FOOTBALL-TEAM that contains this string:  Pittsburgh Steelers.    What if our application requires that the … Read More »

OK, so you’ve written your COBOL program with a copious amount of code that you pulled off the top of your head.  And now you execute the program, but the results are not what you were expecting.    What to do?  Using a … Read More »