As part of my working life I happy to say I use COBOL and for better or worse it is here to stay. With this in mind it annoys me I here\/see saying things such as <\/p>\n
COBOL is a old language that naturally prohibits you from using modern design patterns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
rubbish I say… COBOL can be used in good ways and bad ways.<\/p>\n
I will try and show you that COBOL can be used in a good way… lets take the “Singleton pattern<\/a>“, as the first example.<\/p>\n
First.. lets start off my creating a singleton class in csharp… so here it is: <\/p>\n
\nusing System.Collections;<\/p>\npublic sealed class MySingleton {
\n\tprivate static readonly Hashtable sharedHashtable = new Hashtable();<\/p>\n\t\/\/ Explicit static constructor to tell C# compiler
\n\t\/\/ not to mark type as beforefieldinit
\n\tstatic MySingleton() {
\n\t}<\/p>\n\tprivate MySingleton() {
\n\t}<\/p>\n\tpublic static Hashtable Singleton {
\n\t\tget {
\n\t\t\treturn sharedHashtable;
\n\t\t}
\n\t}
\n}
\n<\/code><\/p>\nNot too shabby.. but lets see what we can do in COBOL… <\/p>\n
\n $set ilusing\"System.Collections\"
\n class-id. \"MySingleton\".<\/p>\n01 shared-hashtable type \"Hashtable\"
\n static property as \"Singleton\" with no set.<\/p>\nmethod-id. \"New\" static.
\n set shared-hashtable to new type \"Hashtable\"
\n end method \"New\".
\n<\/code><\/p>\nWhat… COBOL is smaller… that can’t be true… sorry but it is…<\/p>\n
To complete the example… lets use it…<\/p>\n
\n *> Add two items to the single hashtable
\n invoke type \"MySingleton\"::\"Singleton\"::
\n \"Add\"(\"01234567\",\"Ian\")<\/p>\ninvoke type \"MySingleton\"::\"Singleton\"::
\n \"Add\"(\"987654321\",\"Stephen\")<\/p>\n*> Now get one of the items of the singleton
\n display \"Account 01234567 - Contains: \"
\n type \"MySingleton\"::\"Singleton\"::\"Item\"(\"01234567\")
\n<\/code><\/p>\nAnd I am sure some people… will say sure… this is really true… it is… here is it running.. <\/p>\n
\nc:temp> cobol MySingleton.cbl ilgen(sub);
\nc:temp> cobol UseSingleton.cbl ilgen ilref\"MySingleton.dll\";
\nc:temp> UseSingleton.exe
\nAccount 01234567 - Contains: Ian
\nc:temp> csc MySingleton.cs \/target:library
\nc:temp> UseSingleton.exe
\nAccount 01234567 - Contains: Ian
\n<\/code><\/p>\nNow it seems to me that COBOL is being under rated… perhaps someone should shout about it! \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n
[ad#Google Adsense-3]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As part of my working life I happy to say I use COBOL and for better or worse it is here to stay. With this in mind it annoys me I here\/see saying things such as COBOL is a old … Continue reading