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From: wapd@houxj.UUCP (Bill Dietrich)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: How standard is COBOL ?
Message-ID: <422@houxj.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Nov-84 12:59:49 EST
Article-I.D.: houxj.422
Posted: Thu Nov  8 12:59:49 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Nov-84 07:12:28 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 20



	I have almost no experience with COBOL, but I thought
it was very well standardized, compared to most languages.
I thought there were 7 levels or packages, an ANSI standard,
and so on.

	But I was reading the Nov 84 Unix/World, and the
article "A Software Vendor's Search" by Neal Nelson
says "... I had written applications in Data General COBOL,
IBM Series/1 COBOL and IBM 370 COBOL.  The manufacturer
and operating system had made these three versions of COBOL
so different that moving from one machine to another was
almost as difficult as starting over in a new language."

	Is this typical of different COBOL versions ?

					Bill Dietrich
					houxj!wapd