Beginning COBOL for Programmers is a comprehensive, sophisticated tutorial and modular skills reference on the COBOL programming language for established programmers. This book is for you if you are a developer who would like toโor mustโadd COBOL to your repertoire. Perhaps you recognize the opportunities presented by the current COBOL skills crisis, or are working in a mission critical enterprise which retains legacy COBOL applications. Whatever your situation, Beginning COBOL for Programmers meets your needs as an established programmer moving to COBOL.
Beginning COBOL for Programmers includes comprehensive coverage of ANS 85 COBOL features and techniques, including control structures, condition names, sequential and direct access files, data redefinition, string handling, decimal arithmetic, subprograms, and the report writer. The final chapter includes a substantial introduction to object-oriented COBOL.
Benefiting from over one hundred example programs, youโll receive an extensive introduction to the core and advanced features of the COBOL language and will learn to apply these through comprehensive and varied exercises. If you've inherited some legacy COBOL, youโll be able to grasp the COBOL idioms, understand the constructs, and recognize what's happening in the code youโre working with.
Todayโs enterprise application developers will find that COBOL skills open newโor oldโdoors, and this extensive COBOL reference is the book to help you acquire and develop your COBOL skills.
What youยll learn
- The basics of COBOL and its control structures
- How to declare and manipulate data, including tabular data
- How to handle sequential, indexed, and relative files
- How to SORT data and use Input and Output procedures
- How to SEARCH tabular data
- How to use contained and external subprograms to create modular programs
- How to use the COBOL Report Writer
- How to write ISO 2002 object-oriented COBOL programs
Who this book is for
This book is for established programmers looking for a COBOL tutorial and modular skills reference in one handy book. Whether you have inherited some legacy COBOL and need to maintain it, or you have a fresh COBOL project in front of you, the tutorial and skills reference will help you succeed in COBOL.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction to COBOLโ
2. COBOL Foundation
3. Data Declaration In COBOL
4. Procedure Division Basics
5. Control Structures: Selection
6. Control Structures: Iterationโ
7. Introduction to Sequential Files
8. Advanced Sequential Files
9. Edited Pictures
10. Processing Sequential Files
11. Creating Tabular Dataโ
12. Advanced Data Declaration
13. Searching Tabular Data
14. Sorting and Merging
15. String Manipulation
16. Creating Large Systems
17. Direct Access Files
18. The COBOL Report Writerโ
19. OO-COBOL