[ale] You know you're getting old....

[Ben Coleman]

Note that you can run into COBOL in unexpected places.  Back when I was 
working for a payment processing company (the guys who install credit 
card terminals in stores), we had a situation where we needed to 
periodically process a data file, which came from an IBM mainframe.  The 
only definition for the layout of the data (which were variable-length 
records, to boot) was a COBOL copybook (a file containing the COBOL 
definitions of the fields).  We at the time were using Clarion. 
Happily, I knew COBOL, as it was one of the first languages I used in a 
work situation.  I ended up writing a set of 4 Perl scripts which would 
read the COBOL, generate the equivalent Clarion layout code, generate 
code to do the necessary EBCDIC-to-ASCII conversions, document the 
fields where the E-to-A conversions might have to be done by hand 
(because there were overlapping groups, and which group might be 
actually in use wasn't obvious), and wrapped up the whole thing in a 
Clarion template.  Clarion programs needing to read that file just 
needed to use that template.

Ben
-- 
Ben Coleman oloryn at benshome.net | For the wise man, doing right trumps
http://oloryn.benshome.net/     | looking right.  For the fool, looking
Amateur Radio NJ8J              | right trumps doing right.
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