gcobol

[Jon Elson]

On 3/14/22 19:53, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
> Saw a note on the GCC list that I thought some here might find interesting: it announces the existence (not quite done but getting there) of a COBOL language front end for GCC.  Interesting.  For those who deal in legacy COBOL applications that want a more modern platform, I wonder if this might be a good way to get there.  Run old COBOL dusty decks on Linux, yeah...
>
I rejuvenated some old Pascal programs using the FPC (Free 
Pascal Compiler) that is basically the same idea.  It was 
designed to take Borland Turbo Pascal and DEC Pascal 
extensions, and did quite well with it.

In 1996 I built a laser photoplotter and wrote a Turbo 
Pascal program to convert Gerber photoplotter language to 
raster strips and run the plotter directly off the PC with a 
DMA card.  That computer was getting REALLY old, and I was 
worried about keeping it working, so I migrated the plotting 
to a Beagle Bone with the PRU microcontroller emulating the 
DMA card.  Then, I migrated the Gerber-raster converter 
program to FPC and cleaned it up a bit.

Jon