Regular Expressions in COBOL

purusothaman · New User Joined: 17 Feb 2007 Posts: 39 Location: Chennai

Hi all,

I was trying to know whether it is possible to use Regular Expressions in COBOL in one way or other.

As a search in the forum, did not return any posts, I thought of having this new post.

Robert Sample · Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 6:48 pm

Regular expressions, per se, are not supported in COBOL. Similar functionality for alphanumeric variables can be achieved by use of reference modification and so forth.

purusothaman · New User Joined: 17 Feb 2007 Posts: 39 Location: Chennai

Thanks Knuth.

I was wondering whether any Regualr Expressions web services are available for COBOL.

Thanks again.

PeterHolland · Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 1:48 pm

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 1:53 pm

depending on ...
the compelling need for such support
Your skills ( or available to You thru somebody else )
the COBOL level used in Your organization

You might investigate the use of of a PCRE library ( written in C )
at www.pcre.org/

or www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/
to start writing Your own