There are two current/ongoing projects to produce an "open source" and/or GNU compiler. For one, see the project "COBOL for GCC". This site also includes a status on various other "open source" projects. There is a freely available COBOL compiler for DOS. It can be found on many archive sites, named COBOL650.ZIP. You also need DPATH30.ZIP. Have a read through Section 8 before you start. It is widely rumored that the sources for this compiler are available from a BBS.

There are many vendors who sell COBOL compilers. Almost all of the mainframe hardware/operating system vendors, also sell a COBOL compiler for their systems. The following are some of the vendors providing COBOL compilers for systems where they are not the operating system vendor. Acucorp, CA, Fujitsu, Liant, IBM, and Micro Focus all produced compilers for one or more of these DOS environments. Microsoft used to repackage the Micro Focus compiler under their name, but not any more. See similar questions...

Port of GCC and relevant tools providing a UNIX-like API on top of the Win32 API. http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ IDE distributed with an MS Windows port of GCC and the Mingw32 runtime library. http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html A free version of Borland's C++ compiler is now available for download from: http://www.inprise.com/bcppbuilder/freecompiler/ lcc-win32 is a free C compiler available for 32-bit Windows. http://www.cs.virginia. See similar questions...

COBOL is a computer programming language developed by the CODASYL committee (Conference on Data Systems Languages) in 1959. COBOL became the business programming language of choice for large scale applications throughout the 60's 70's and 80's. Millions and millions of lines of COBOL programs were written and these systems (often called legacy systems) are still in use today since it is expensive and difficult to replace an accounting system or payroll system in a large corporation. See similar questions...

Since there have been several requests for a Fortran to C translator in the past week, I'm reposting the announcement about f2c. The short answer is you can get f2c by anonymous-ftp from netlib.att.com in directory dist/f2c. Source for f2c, a Fortran 77 to C translator jointly developed by folks from Bell Labs, Bellcore, and Carnegie Mellon, is now freely available. See similar questions...

Scriptol compiler are free of charge and remain free forever. I would prefer to sell Scriptol tee-shirts instead :-) See similar questions...

A popular and high-quality free C compiler is the FSF's GNU C compiler, or gcc. An MS-DOS port, djgpp, is also available. As far as I know, there are versions of gcc for Macs and Windows machines, too. A very inexpensive MS-DOS compiler is Power C from Mix Software, 1132 Commerce Drive, Richardson, TX 75801, USA, 214-783-6001. A shareware MS-DOS C compiler is available from ftp.hitech.com.au/hitech/pacific. Registration is optional for non-commercial use. Archives associated with the comp. See similar questions...

Unfortunately we are not staffed to provide answers to these types of questions. Many of these questions are answered in The Java Tutorial. You can also try the Java Technologies for Web Services at the JDC. By the way, we tested all of the examples in the book on Suns, and PCs. The examples work for us. If you are having problems with the examples, then you are probably having configuration problems. We get a fair number of messages to our e-mail address, users@jwsdp.dev.java. See similar questions...

The draft of the Committee Draft (CD !>!) of the next COBOL Standard which underwent public review in 1997 included significant OO COBOL support. Based on the comments received J4 (ANSI) and WG4 (ISO) or currently revising it (and deleting some features. Micro Focus has an OO COBOL product. It does not conform exactly to the OO COBOL proposal currently being discussed, however -- the syntax is a subset of the current proposal with a few variations. See similar questions...

Well, firstly we are developing a Windows user interface. This will be Win-32, i.e. it will run under Windows 95 and Windows NT. But since the compiler is a non-graphical application, and the DOS interface runs quite happily under all flavours of Windows already, it has not been as high a priority as making sure that the basic functionality is top-notch. In other words, we believe an excellent compiler with a DOS front-end is better than an average compiler with a Windows front end. See similar questions...

The compiler is slow at compiling my program, why? A: When you install the compiler it will operate in demo mode for 21 days. When the compiler is in demo mode some compiler options are disabled and there is a delay compiling files. To active the compiler you must register it. You can register on-line from the HI-TECH web site. Go to: http://www.htsoft.com/support/register.php If you have any problems registering or require more information about registration, please contact sales@htsoft. See similar questions...

To install two or more versions of the same compiler you will need to follow the following procedure: Install the first compiler as normal. Make note the of the directory where the compiler was installed for the PICC compiler it will be, by default, 'c:\ht-pic'. Then before you install the second compiler rename the installation directory, for example 'c:\ht-pic' maybe renamed to 'c:\ht-pic_7_86pl4'. See similar questions...

For a while, Unix distributions included both an interpreter and a compiler; but the interpreter is is usually fast enough even for production work, and most people found that using the compiler wasn't worth the extra compilation time or the hassles involved. We no longer advertise the compiler or produce binaries for it. It is still part of the source code distribution, and we have not deliberately broken it, but we no longer support it and we cannot offer help if problems arise. See similar questions...

Software is compiled in traditional programming in order to optimize human readable code for machine reading, making the computing process more efficient, reducing duplication and redundancy. Until the w3compiler, this concept has not been applied to Web site and application code. We strongly believe that the code Web developers write for themselves should not be the same code that is delivered to end users. See similar questions...

Ans: To correct an earlier answer:All called modules cannot run standalone if they require program variables passed to them via the LINKAGE section. Dynamically called modules are those that are not bound with the calling program at link edit time (IEWL for IBM) and so are loaded from the program library (joblib or steplib) associated with the job. See similar questions...

NOTE: To see (or download) a copy of the latest draft of the next COBOL Standard, go to the J4 "external web site" and find a link to the "latest and greatest" version from there. The external J4 web-site is at: This site also provides all the information on the current status of J4's work and links to various related sites) First "9x" has become "0x". See similar questions...

Asking this question anywhere appears to generate much general flaming and general language wars and very little useful information. No such beast is listed in the free compilers FAQ, but an ad has appeared in the US publication "Programmer's Shop Catalog" for COBOL to C (and PL/I to C) translators. Contact : Another (semi-related) question concerns COBOL to Java translators. See similar questions...