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programming-languagescobol

What's this language?


A former co-worker left us with thousands of lines of code looking like this. This is more a curiosity, since I rewrote everything he did in less obscure languages :-)

Nevertheless I'm curious. Is this meta-code or an actual language?

  DATA DIVISION.

   WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.

   78  dialog-system               VALUE "DIV".

   01 Display-Error.
      03 Display-Error-No             PIC 9(4) comp-5.
      03 Display-Details-1            PIC 9(4) comp-5.
      03 Display-Details-2            PIC 9(4) comp-5.
          05 Display-Details-3            PIC 9(4) comp-5.


   COPY "DS-CNTRL.MF".
   COPY "ThisApp.txt".


   PROCEDURE DIVISION.

  *---------------------------------------------------------------*

   Main-Process SECTION.
      PERFORM Program-Initialize
      PERFORM Program-Body UNTIL EXIT-FLAG-TRUE
      PERFORM Program-Terminate
      .

  *---------------------------------------------------------------*

   Program-Initialize SECTION.

      INITIALIZE Ds-Control-Block
      INITIALIZE Data-block
      MOVE Data-block-version-no
                               TO Ds-Data-Block-Version-No
      MOVE Version-no TO Ds-Version-No

      MOVE Ds-New-Set TO Ds-Control
      MOVE "MyApp" TO Ds-Set-Name

      .

  *---------------------------------------------------------------*

   Program-Body SECTION.

      PERFORM Call-Dialog-System
      .

  *---------------------------------------------------------------*

   Program-Terminate SECTION.

      STOP RUN
      .

  *---------------------------------------------------------------*

   Call-Dialog-System SECTION.

      CALL dialog-system USING Ds-Control-Block,
                               Data-Block
      IF NOT Ds-No-Error
          MOVE Ds-System-Error TO Display-error
          DISPLAY "DS ERROR NO:   "  Display-error-no
          DISPLAY "Error Details(1) :   "  Display-Details-1
          DISPLAY "Error Details(2) :   "  Display-Details-2
          DISPLAY "Error Details(3) :   "  Display-Details-3
          PERFORM Program-Terminate
      END-IF

Solution

  • That's COBOL! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobol