free implementation? factorial?
in [Cobol]
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From: Nicolas Neuss on 9 Jan 2006 10:48 Hello, I am teaching a CS course ("Programming and Software Techniques") at the university of Heidelberg. This course uses C++, but I want to give my students also a feeling for other languages. To this end, I have reserved a little bit of time (5-10 minutes of each session) for telling them a little about other languages (history, some important features) and showing them the factorial function written in this language. Now, since COBOL is an important language, I want to include it in this way, too. I was able to find some information about COBOL in Wikipedia which should suffice for the short overview, but I have not succeeded in finding a free implementation for COBOL. Is there such a thing (maybe a demo version)? Furthermore, as much as I understand the factorial function is already available in modern COBOL implementations, so it is difficult to find a suitable program (at least, what I found with Google is either untested or looks suboptimal). If factorial would not be available, how would it look like in modern COBOL? Thanks, Nicolas.
From: charles hottel on 9 Jan 2006 12:45 go to google groups and enter "comp.lang.cobol" then do a search on "factorial hottel" you will find a factorial program from the COBOL programmers guide that uses the LOCAL-STORAGE SECTION. "Nicolas Neuss" <firstname.lastname(a)iwr.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote in message news:87mzi5tn9y.fsf(a)ortler.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de... > Hello, > > I am teaching a CS course ("Programming and Software Techniques") at the > university of Heidelberg. This course uses C++, but I want to give my > students also a feeling for other languages. To this end, I have reserved > a little bit of time (5-10 minutes of each session) for telling them a > little about other languages (history, some important features) and > showing > them the factorial function written in this language. > > Now, since COBOL is an important language, I want to include it in this > way, too. I was able to find some information about COBOL in Wikipedia > which should suffice for the short overview, but I have not succeeded in > finding a free implementation for COBOL. Is there such a thing (maybe a > demo version)? Furthermore, as much as I understand the factorial > function > is already available in modern COBOL implementations, so it is difficult > to > find a suitable program (at least, what I found with Google is either > untested or looks suboptimal). If factorial would not be available, how > would it look like in modern COBOL? > > Thanks, Nicolas.
From: Louis Krupp on 9 Jan 2006 15:28 Nicolas Neuss wrote: > I am teaching a CS course ("Programming and Software Techniques") at the > university of Heidelberg. This course uses C++, but I want to give my > students also a feeling for other languages. To this end, I have reserved > a little bit of time (5-10 minutes of each session) for telling them a > little about other languages (history, some important features) and showing > them the factorial function written in this language. > > Now, since COBOL is an important language, I want to include it in this > way, too. I was able to find some information about COBOL in Wikipedia > which should suffice for the short overview, but I have not succeeded in > finding a free implementation for COBOL. Is there such a thing (maybe a > demo version)? Furthermore, as much as I understand the factorial function > is already available in modern COBOL implementations, so it is difficult to > find a suitable program (at least, what I found with Google is either > untested or looks suboptimal). If factorial would not be available, how > would it look like in modern COBOL? I've never used TinyCobol, but it might be worth a try. I think an iterative factorial implementation might be easier to follow than a recursive routine. This would look something like: move 1 to factorial. perform varying t from 2 to number multiply factorial by t end-perform. Louis
From: Nicolas Neuss on 9 Jan 2006 15:13 "charles hottel" <jghottel(a)yahoo.com> writes: > go to google groups and enter "comp.lang.cobol" then do a search on > "factorial hottel" you will find a factorial program from the COBOL > programmers guide that uses the LOCAL-STORAGE SECTION. You mean <http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.cobol/msg/fc907f4b09daefdf> ? I had found this one already, but had somehow hoped that a nicer version would be possible, e.g. something like in <http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.cobol/msg/fae713b0615c1445> Thank you, Nicolas.
From: Oliver Wong on 9 Jan 2006 16:10
"Louis Krupp" <lkrupp(a)pssw.nospam.com.invalid> wrote in message news:11s5hqph3vd97e6(a)corp.supernews.com... > Nicolas Neuss wrote: >> I am teaching a CS course ("Programming and Software Techniques") at the >> university of Heidelberg. This course uses C++, but I want to give my >> students also a feeling for other languages. To this end, I have >> reserved >> a little bit of time (5-10 minutes of each session) for telling them a >> little about other languages (history, some important features) and >> showing >> them the factorial function written in this language. >> [snip] > > I've never used TinyCobol, but it might be worth a try. I think an > iterative factorial implementation might be easier to follow than a > recursive routine. This would look something like: > > move 1 to factorial. > perform varying t from 2 to number > multiply factorial by t > end-perform. > I'm not exactly a COBOL expert, but from what I understand, COBOL85 doesn't support recursive calls anyway; at least, not in the way that a Java (or C++) programmer would expect recursion to work. - Oliver |