A Historical Perspective on COBOL (2020)

Re:A Historical Perspective on COBOL (2020) by DoomHotel on Friday May 07, 2021 @02:11PM (#27078918)

We used PERFORM to implement calls. Whether or not implemented with a stack, it acts the same as any call/return. So to implement a simple loop to count records in a file:

PERFORM COUNT-ROWS VARYING COUNT FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL EOF.

And the callee did:

READ INPUT-FILE AT END MOVE 1 TO EOF-FLAG.

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Re:A Historical Perspective on COBOL (2020) by ASalazarMX on Friday May 07, 2021 @04:59PM (#27080800)

Ah, the joys of forgetting to put a period at the end of the COUNT-ROWS paragraph.

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Re:A Historical Perspective on COBOL (2020) by DoomHotel on Friday May 07, 2021 @11:12PM (#27083457)

We had some coding rules to help prevent that:

1. No unnecessary periods in the code

2. Required periods (ending paragraphs and if/then/else) go on a line by themselves

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