--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"Paul Robinson" <paul@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:BMuKd.9$iD.7@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> JerryMouse wrote:
>> Paul Robinson wrote:
>>
>>>I am considering the development of a Cobol compiler itself written in
>>>Cobol. Please don't flame me over the perceived stupidity of such a
>>>choice, I think it is a better idea than a language that cannot
>>>compile itself. I do believe obviously that there is enough power in
>>>the language to implement a COBOL compiler using the COBOL language.
After
>>>all, a compiler is simply a program to translate text from a
>>>source into a target. We're not talking rocket science or brain
surgery
>>>here.
>>>
>>>I believe there is money to be made with a good inexpensive Cobol
>>>compiler which is available for several different targets, which would
>>>allow applications to be used unchanged on different environments,
>>>such as IBM Mainframe, DOS, Windows, Linux and others. Having done
>>>maintenance on three other language compilers and written one from
>>>scratch for Fortran in three months, I decided to focus on Cobol as I
>>>think it is an underserved market and I think there is both room for
>>>another product and sufficient market need to merit the time and
>>>effort in developing one.
>>>
>>>I am wondering if there was interest in such a thing. What I am
>>>thinking about is something that did not require run-time licensing
>>>fees, would not be hugely expensive as most Cobol compilers seem to
>>>be, and by writing the compiler in Cobol itself, the people who use
>>>the compiler, if they wanted an additional feature the compiler did
>>>not supply, could write the code for it themselves if they chose to
>>>do so.
>>
>>
>> The Realia compiler is written in COBOL. I saw the source listing once
- a
>> binder as tall as a basketball player (well, maybe a SHORT basketball
>> player). As I recall it was 800,000 lines of code.
>>
>
> Maybe I'm missing something - or deluding myself - but I think that
seems
> extremely high. 800,000 lines of code seems to indicate an application
that
> is far too complex or possibly much of the code is generated by other
programs
> from specifications instead of written to handle compilation of one or
more
> Cobol source program files. Or maybe I'm just a little bit brighter than
I
> thought I was.
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