On Wed, 3 Jul 2024 09:31:54 -0400 (EDT) Robert Heller <heller@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The code is available on GitHub here: > https://github.com/RobertPHeller/PiggyBank > There is just one source file (there is a simple Makefile there as > well). Hi Robert, I tried to compile PiggyBank.cob with gcobol. https://gitlab.cobolworx.com/COBOLworx/gcc-cobol/ I encountered syntax errors that surprised me, that I describe below. (Sadly, I can't recommend gcobol to you, because it has no support for SCREEN SECTION, and won't anytime soon because mainframe programs usually rely on CICS for user interaction.) Still, my curiosity got the better of me. Could you tell me please what version of COBOL you're using? $ make COBOL=/usr/local/gcc-cobol/bin/gcobol /usr/local/gcc-cobol/bin/gcobol -o PiggyBank PiggyBank.cob PiggyBank.cob:7: syntax error at 'RECORD' cobol1: error: failed compiling PiggyBank.cob make: *** [Makefile:51: PiggyBank] Error 1 (Thanks for the Makefile, btw, and especially for the "COBOL" variable!) The first error was at ORGANISATION IS RECORD BINARY SEQUENTIAL The ISO standard does not admit "organisation" with an 's', nor "RECORD BINARY" in that clause. What effect does RECORD BINARY have on the program? It seems to me that all COBOL files are organized in records, and handled as binary data. COBOL has no notion of "text" files in the Posix sense. There are LINE SEQUENTIAL files, of course, but to COBOL that's a sequence of variable-length records delimited by a newline character (usually). Later we encounter PiggyBank.cob:47: syntax error: 01 AccountData: invalid LEVEL for OCCURS The ISO standard specifically disallows OCCURS for Levels 01, 66, 77, and 88. Regarding 1-based indexing, gcobol by default rejects a 0 index value for a table. If the value is known at compile time, it's a compile-time error, else it's a run-time error. Regards, --jkl
