1) Programs Purpose: DOS COBOL Interpreter 
2) How to Install: Copy cobol.exe and sample1.cbl to a subdirectory 
                   of your choice.
3) Programs Current Status: COBOL Interpreter 0.001 is freeware
4) Distribution Status: Freely distributable
5) Contact for questions: dean@deskware.com, subject: COBOL Interpreter 0.001









COBOL Interpreter
(Current release: 0.001 Alpha)


A compact and easy to use COBOL interpreter for the Linux/MS-DOS/Win32 
environments.  Currently still under development, this interpreter implements 
some new language features that are very usefull.  One such feature is the
DELIMITED WITH option on the OPEN statement.  This features allows delimited
text files to be read into Group Level Data structures.  The parsing of the
delimiter is handled automatically when this option is used.  Using this
feature you can quickly develop simple COBOL data conversion programs to 
convert data that would normally require manually importing data into a
database or spreadsheet product and then exporting the data to a file with
the required format.  Interpreted COBOL programs are very usefull 
when interfaces need be built to convert delimited text file data provided
by one system to a different file format required by the interfacing system.
These production interface programs can then be scheduled by your "cron" 
(Linux) or "at" (NT) to run "cobol program.cbl", where program.cbl is the
name of your interface program.

If you have any questions/comments/suggestions, please email them 
to dean@deskware.com









Copyright (c) 1996 Deskware, Inc.