[open-cobol-list] Cobol sites, books, courses

[Bob]

Yes, Cobol is column-oriented.  Columns 1-6 were originally for line 
numbers, but now is just comments (not checked by most compilers at all).  
Column 7 should be blank except for line comments, when it should be an 
asterisk *.

Sorry, no Cobol books in particular to recommend.  I only have one from 
1980 that I haven't looked at in many years.

On-line, I tend to reference the MF Cobol manuals (but then I work mostly 
with MF Cobol at client sites).  They do have MF enhancements marked, so 
you'll know those aren't standard Cobol.
http://supportline.microfocus.com/documentation/books/oc41books/lrpubb.htm

You also might check out "The Cobol Center" website, or the Cobol User 
Groups site.
http://infogoal.com/cbd/cbdhome.htm
http://www.cobug.com/

Here you can find an entire Cobol course on-line.
http://www.csis.ul.ie/cobol/

Have fun,
  Bob
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On Monday 09 April 2007 2:02 pm, address@hidden wrote:
Mr. Bob,

Thanks dude! I just removed the line numbers and it worked fine. Pasting 
code will be pretty simple now. I think I can even do it in gedit. It 
wont give me the syntax highlighting. But I can work with it anyhow.

I never knew you could do that with comments in those 6 spaces. Very 
convenient. Also I assume everything has that everything has to start in 
column 8? With column 7 being blank? 

Any suggestions on some good cobol books? I don't mind spending dough to 
learn this stuff.

Thanks kindly and best regards,
Joseph James Frantz

Bob <address@hidden> wrote: Vince,

Here's the highlighter file for Kate.  I didn't post to the list earlier 
because I'd done that last year sometime and didn't want to bother people 
again with the hilighter xml file, even if it does compress to 5K (I 
haven't touched it since then).

Joseph,

The highlighter file is just that - syntax highlighting, nothing more (no 
line-numbering, no command-completion, no online-help, etc).  I don't 
know of any editors under Unix that will put out line numbering, 
especially keeping the line numbers straight when you add new lines in 
the middle, though you may be able to write a script or something.  Line 
numbers are not required in general, and for most Cobol's, those first 6 
columns are treated as comments, so you can leave them blank.

Kate is configurable for many things, including tabs.  Look under 
Configure/Editor/Editing for "insert spaces instead of tabs".  Also under 
Indentation, which has some other tab-related settings.

Also note that if you're copying from files that came from Windows/Dos 
(old program files), they may have return+linefeed instead of the usual 
Unix linefeed only for line endings.  I don't know offhand if Kate will 
convert that automatically for you or not, but if not you may end up with 
some lines ending in linefeed and others in return+linefeed.  To track 
down what is happening, try opening the file using khexedit - a KDE 
binary editor that will let you see each char, including all control 
chars.

Thanks,
  Bob