Re: [open-cobol-list] solving my problem, helping others. JNI vs Boost

[Brian Tiffin]

On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:57:25 -0400, Patrick  
<address@hidden> wrote:

> So my primary focus is controlling scientific instruments and processing
> data from them.
>
> I have struggled with my project, I probably should just do the whole
> thing in C/C++, like almost everyone that does this  sort of thing does
> but I don't really like these languages and love the clearer layout of
> Cobol, Ada, Pascal, Fortran etc.

It's kinda weird, but you can almost think of OC programming as C  
programming when you want to.

As a quick for instance.  This is the Makefile I used to test out FastCGI  
on Cygwin a few days ago.

myfcgi: myfcgi.cob
        cobc -x -C myfcgi.cob
        sed -i 's/#include <stdio.h>/#include <fcgi_stdio.h>/' myfcgi.c
        cobc -x myfcgi.c -lfcgi

cobc accepts .c filenames likka da butter

Plus, being built up around autotools, we win on that side of the  
development fence too.

> With OC moving over to generating C++ code soon I am thinking about C++
> again.

Ummm, don't expect cobc to be generating any C++ in the near future.  It's  
a possibility, but it'll have implications that haven't been studied yet.

> The underlying communication protocols I need to work with are Ethernet,
> RS232 and GPIB and I want to do this in a cross platform way which is an
> extremely tall order.
>
> Boost has cross platform support for both sockets and serial ports.
> There won't be cross platform GPIB  and I will need two or more separate
> libraries for this.
>
> Java also has libraries for sockets and Serial ports as does QT.
>
> Does anyone have any feedback on the best approach for me and also what
> would be best for the greater community?

For Java, I think straight up JNI integration is the way to go, and the  
intermediate tool of choice may well be SWIG.
www.swig.org

For ethernet and TCP/IP start with POSIX and work out from there.  Then,  
find a common denominator for Windows.  (Then cry that you can't because  
Microsoft is special and plays so well with others.  Kidding, LCD library  
code can usually be found.)

For RS232 take a look at socat.  http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/  And a  
sample hint page for serial ports at  
http://technostuff.blogspot.ca/2008/10/some-useful-socat-commands.html   
(that was just the first one I found that mentioned socat and serial

For GPIB take a look at, ummm wait, what is GPIB?   ;-)

Cheers,
Brian

> -Patrick
>
>
>
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