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Editing COBOL programs on PC


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jerryte

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Joined: 29 Oct 2010
Posts: 202
Location: Toronto, ON, Canada

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 1:13 am
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Can someone suggest some COBOL text editors that can run on the PC? I want programs that pass a validity test to ensure no serious bugs or malicous code. I work for a large company and have to be careful about what I install on a work pc.

Ideally the editor would handle indentation and do colour coding for keywords and statements.
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Bill O'Boyle

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Joined: 14 Jan 2008
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Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 1:31 am
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Micro Focus has some of the best PC development products, but they're not cheap -

www.microfocus.com/products

The company should buy it for you....

Bill
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dick scherrer

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Joined: 23 Nov 2006
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 1:45 am
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Hello,

Quote:
The company should buy it for you....
If the company will permit offloading source. . .

Several of my clients do not permit developers to transfer source from the mainframe. One of their reasons is that they have no control over where their source is located.

Before proceeding with this, i'd make sure i had management permission to do this.

Sounds like you want more than just an editor (depending on what this means):
Quote:
I want programs that pass a validity test to ensure no serious bugs or malicous code.
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jerryte

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Location: Toronto, ON, Canada

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 1:58 am
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I searched on Google and found some free stuff but I have no way of knowing if the author put in a virus or malicous code. Firefox is free but since it has wide spread acceptance it is unlikely to be malicous

The ISPF editor has some powerful commands but scrolling is tedious. A text editor with alignment features built in would be nice.
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enrico-sorichetti

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Joined: 14 Mar 2007
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Location: italy

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 2:03 am
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installing on a PC unauthorized software might be cause for lawful termination
so...beware before proceeding.
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dick scherrer

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Joined: 23 Nov 2006
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 2:22 am
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Hello,

Quote:
I searched on Google and found some free stuff but I have no way of knowing if the author put in a virus or malicous code.
You can be reasonably sure they have not if the software is available from some reputable site. . .

Many organizatoins (as Enrico mentions) will terminate people for downloading and installing "stuff" they have found on the web onto company machines. Most organizations will not permit the installation of freeware as there is usually no guaranteed support - which matters to an organization.

If you intend to proceed on your own, get a letter or an e-mail from a manager who has the authority to approve of this.

Repeating what Bill posted:
Quote:
Micro Focus has some of the best PC development products, but they're not cheap
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enrico-sorichetti

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 2:44 am
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and it would be even worse if You installed software You paid for...
the people from accounting might even get more upset than IT/security/audit/...
(charge software/on a company machine/without the company being invoiced/... brrrrr )
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Kjeld

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Joined: 15 Dec 2009
Posts: 365
Location: Denmark

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 3:02 am
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There are smart Cobol editor products available for the mainframe but they are certainly products you will have your development support buy and install for you.

If you want PC workbench functionality, vendors like Rational come in mind, but it is also not something you just sneak in on your workstation.

Lastly, basic spell checking for Cobol verbs can be obtained by using the HILITE functionality in the ISPF editor
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don.leahy

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Joined: 06 Jul 2010
Posts: 765
Location: Whitby, ON, Canada

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 5:54 am
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jerryte wrote:
Can someone suggest some COBOL text editors that can run on the PC? I want programs that pass a validity test to ensure no serious bugs or malicous code. I work for a large company and have to be careful about what I install on a work pc.

Ideally the editor would handle indentation and do colour coding for keywords and statements.
Let me know if you find an editor that prevents serious bugs. That would be worth some serious $$ to any company!

More seriously, my favourite PC based editor was, and is, SPF/PC (aka SPF/PRO...but not SPF/SE). Unfortunately it was retired back in the late 1990s and is no longer available from the vendor.

As others have mentioned, the ISPF Edit HILITE command can colour your Cobol (or JCL or REXX or PLI or etc) code so that syntax errors become much more obvious. It is amazing what a difference such a simple feature can make.
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Ronald Burr

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Joined: 22 Oct 2009
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Location: U.S.A.

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 9:34 am
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I believe that the OP meant that the editor itself should be able to pass a validity test to ensure that it contained no serious bugs or malicious code - not that the editor should be capable of ensuring that the source it is being used to edit did not contain any serious bugs or malicious code.
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ofer71

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Joined: 27 Dec 2005
Posts: 2358
Location: Israel

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 11:40 am
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I use Textpad to see color-sensitive COBOL, REXX, JCL etc. on my PC. I also added some macros to my Textpad for FTPing the files directly to my mainframe.

O.
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Anuj Dhawan

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Joined: 22 Apr 2006
Posts: 6250
Location: Mumbai, India

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 7:37 pm
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UltraEdit, if I'm not mistaken can also show color-sensitive COBOL, REXX etc. but not the syntax errors.

And how about RDz from IBM.
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enrico-sorichetti

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Joined: 14 Mar 2007
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 7:43 pm
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ultraedit is not free,
see my previous post about installing non free software on the employer equipment

but again, we are just wasting time here,
before proceeding the TS should check his organization policy about <other> software installation on organization equipment
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PeterHolland

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Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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Location: Netherlands, Amstelveen

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 7:49 pm
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I still use the paper coding sheets and after im finished coding 25000 lines of coding with pencil and paper i scan it into wordpad.
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enrico-sorichetti

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 7:52 pm
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wouldn' t it be better to pass it to the girls in the punched/cards department icon_biggrin.gif
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PeterHolland

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Location: Netherlands, Amstelveen

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 7:55 pm
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enrico-sorichetti wrote:
wouldn' t it be better to pass it to the girls in the punched/cards department icon_biggrin.gif


Sure Enrico,

but then im coming home too late icon_wink.gif
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Marso

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Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 1353
Location: Israel

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 8:25 pm
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Notepad++ (notepad-plus.sourceforge.net) have been authorized for installation by the company.
But COBOL is not in the default languages list. It is, however, available as a Plugin.
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Kjeld

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Joined: 15 Dec 2009
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Location: Denmark

PostPosted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 9:49 pm
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At my installation, we have a product called SmartEdit from ViaSoft.

This is a mainframe editor with ISPF Editor look and feel, but also with Cobol awareness, so you can outline and trace logic, jump the view from performs to the section performed, trace storage references, zoom in on copybooks, and finally call the actual Cobol compiler syntax checker to get your source code checked for syntax errors.

Syntax errors are hilighted as MSG lines in the editor adjacent to the line in error, just ready for correcting it.
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ronald wouterosn

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Joined: 17 Sep 2017
Posts: 6
Location: netherlands

PostPosted: Thu Oct 21, 2021 1:42 am
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Bill O'Boyle wrote:
Micro Focus has some of the best PC development products, but they're not cheap -

www.microfocus.com/products

The company should buy it for you....

Bill


Hi Bill, Micro Focus has not a mainframe like editor like SPF / PDF ISPF or whatever name IBM has given in all these years to his product. I have a version of SPF 365 running on my PC but it seems that the company stopped. Very much of a pitty because it worked very well. There is still a freeware SPFlite to find on the internet. Less advanced, but it knows the commands.
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Rohit Umarjikar

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Joined: 21 Sep 2010
Posts: 3051
Location: NYC,USA

PostPosted: Thu Oct 21, 2021 3:30 am
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Please don’t tailgate old posts. Start your own new post and reference this in that to ask or make any comments.
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