Re: [open-cobol-list] Help out of hell

[Keisuke Nishida]

At Mon, 21 Apr 2003 15:25:33 +0200,
Roger Cooreman wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to render operational a cobol program probably written for a
> IBM mainframe machine.
> After 10*n tries, the open-cobol still rejects the translation P.ex.
> "runcoo.cbl:9: error: `txt-acnm' undefined" for the cobol lines
>        INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION.
>        FILE-CONTROL.
>            select    txt     assign to txt-acnm

According to my grammer book, the syntax of ASSIGN clause is

           | TO { device-name-1 }...[ _USING_ data-name-1 ] |
  _ASSIGN_ |    { literal-1     }                           |
           | _USING_ data-name-1                            |

so the word `txt-acnm' you use should be a device-name, which
must be defined in the preceding SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph.
However, our compiler does not support device-name yet because
it is system dependent.  Could you suggest how we should handle
this?

For the moment, you can modify `txt-acnm' to "txt-acnm"
so that the file is assigned to a file named "txt-acnm":

       FILE-CONTROL.
           select    txt     assign to "txt-acnm"

> 2) where to find the exact ISO (or ANSI) chart on COBOL85 so at least i
> know what terminology is accepted and which one is not allowed and what
> each term means; the developpers of open-cobol must have that, otherwise
> it's impossible to create a compilor.

I am refering to the ISO COBOL 2002 standard:

  http://webstore.ansi.org/ansidocstore/product.asp?sku=ISO%2FIEC+1989%3A2002

But this does not mean our compiler currently conforms to it
because open-cobol is still under development.  Please ask here
if you have any question.

> 3) is it possible for the translater to number the cobol input or output
> so as to easyly go to the line in error.

Usually this is a task of the editor you use.  If you use `vi',
type "<line-number> G".  If you use Emacs, type "M-x goto-line
RET <line-number> RET".

> BTW i think that a blank line in a copy statement replacement gives an
> error.

Could you give me an example?

Thanks,
Keisuke