On Mon, 09 Mar 2020 04:32:55 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 08/03/2020 20:06, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>> On Sun, 08 Mar 2020 15:28:06 +0000, mm0fmf wrote:
>>
>>> Java: another Dodo language like COBOL.
>>>
>> Not even slightly.
>>
>> COBOL is gone and not much missed,
>
> I don't think so. Huge amount of legacy code is still in use.

True enough - I was thinking of new systems being written and anybody
much under retirement age knowing how to write code in it.

However it did have one neat trick: its output formatting was ahead of
almost any other language and still is. Think how much code you'd need in
any other language to get the same print formatting as the single COBOL
declaration:

05 INVOICE-TOTAL  PIC "Z(4)9.99CR" BLANK WHEN ZERO.

For those who don't know the COBOL: zero would produce a blank, 0.5
becomes, "    0.50  ", -0.5 becomes "    0.50CR" and, of course 1024
becomes " 1024.00  ".


--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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