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 to—or must—add 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, you’ll 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, you’ll be able to grasp the COBOL idioms, understand the constructs, and recognize what's happening in the code you’re working with.

Today’s enterprise application developers will find that COBOL skills open new—or old—doors, and this extensive COBOL reference is the book to help you acquire and develop your COBOL skills.

What you’ll 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 COBOL 

2. COBOL Foundation

3. Data Declaration In COBOL

4. Procedure Division Basics

5. Control Structures: Selection

6. Control Structures: Iteration 

7. Introduction to Sequential Files

8. Advanced Sequential Files

9. Edited Pictures

10. Processing Sequential Files

11. Creating Tabular Data 

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 Writer 

19. OO-COBOL