[NCLUG] COBOL Compiler for Linux?

[Stephen Warren]

Rick Ross wrote:
> I assume they're concerned about processing overhead, compiled code speed,
> overall efficiency.

That wouldn't make sense to me; C is basically as close to the HW as
assembly for the right kind of C, which presumably any COBOL->C compiler
would be producing. (So yes, going via C *could* reduce performance by
generating bad C, but then again, there's no guarantee that a
straight-to-binary compiler generates good code).

The aspect I'd be concerned about is debugability. I have no idea what
kind of debug environment COBOL has, but it'd be hard if, like most
languages, it relies on special ELF sections in the executables, since
they'd be very hard to inject going via C instead of straight to binary.

> I did ask the same question, but was working from home
> on Friday, so won't get an answer until Monday. We're looking at moving
> 30-year-old, incrementally updated over those 30 years, *n*-lines of
> spaghetti code from a government IBM 370 mainframe to a Linux server. Fun,
> huh?

If you're wanting to move incrementally, it seems a COBOL->C compiler
may be the best route to me; it seems more likely that the COBOL-in-C
code would be compatible with new plain C code (i.e. the new C code
could call old COBOL code etc.)