Including a Cobol copybook in REXX program.

new2cobol · Active User Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 70

Is this possible? If yes, How?

I need to process a few files in REXX, I have the copybooks for those.

ofer71 · Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:43 pm Post subject:

You can't use COBOL copybooks within REXX, as both lagnuages interpret and process data types differently. In addition, COBOL variables are declared, while in REXX you dont have a declaration option.

However, it would be nice to write a converter from COBOL variables to REXX. I did it once with NATURAL definitions.

O.

new2cobol · Active User Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 70

Can you provide some guidelines for that? Like, how did you go about doing your NATURAL conversion?

ofer71 · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:00 pm Post subject:

Well, the first step was to read all the relevant documentation of the vendor (Software AG). From that - I was mostly concentrating in the syntax of the data definition blocks.

My next step was to read books about parsing and compiling. This info gave me a way to understand how to write a 'mini-parser' for the NATURAL data definition block. By the way, the book 'Compilers' by Alfred Aho was my favorite.

The next step was the writing work. I decided to write it in REXX, since it's the best language I know to handle strings on the mainframe.

Unfortunatelly, I can't share the code here, as it was written as a part of project we made for an American customer, so now it's the customer's property.

O.