[open-cobol-list] Please double check my tutorial

[Patrick]

Hi Everyone

I want to practice my Cobol and I want to study how each construct ends 
up as C code, to help me better understand libcob and cobc from a 
output-backwards approach, this will supplement my study of the source 
code that is an input-forwards approach.

I am making a tutorial that can be shared with others later.

It will have some programs and a directory for each reserved word.

Here is the naming conventions and strategy.

In the topmost directory I want to make a bunch of programs. They will 
be named with short names as this will be reused later to indicate the 
relations between various programs later.

I have a program at the bottom of this email that is in the topmost 
directory, simply named P001.cob for program 1.

I will then copy and past it into the ACCEPT directory, it is now 
commented beside the ACCEPT statement.

I will then remove this comment from P001.cob, re-comment it and copy it 
into another folder concerning another reserved word. In the ACCEPT 
folder I am going to rename it ACCEPT-P001.cob to show that it is just 
copied from P001.

This would be a stupid strategy for writing code, copying the same code 
all over the place but I think it will be suitable for a tutorial and 
will create a sort of dictionary that people could use to look up the 
use of code in a full program, not just a snippet.

 what do you guys think?

I am using SOURCE is FREE for my examples, is there a reason not to?

BTW I also like to write reserved words in capitals but I will mention 
somewhere that this is not required.

Thanks-Patrick





            >> SOURCE is FREE
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. P001.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 nothing PIC X VALUE IS SPACE .

SCREEN SECTION.
01 simple-screen .
   05 LINE 5 COLUMN 5 VALUE "Type anything, then enter to exit" .

   05 LINE 5 COLUMN 40 TO nothing .

PROCEDURE DIVISION.
  DISPLAY simple-screen

    PERFORM UNTIL nothing  NOT = SPACE

      ACCEPT simple-screen  *> Here ACCEPT is used to pass the screen 
information to the program

    END-PERFORM


STOP RUN.