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From: johnl@godot.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: How standard is COBOL ?
Message-ID: <440@ima.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 10-Nov-84 23:36:58 EST
Article-I.D.: ima.440
Posted: Sat Nov 10 23:36:58 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Nov-84 07:14:34 EST
Lines: 18
Nf-ID: #R:houxj:-42200:ima:9800002:000:758
Nf-From: ima!johnl    Nov 10 18:04:00 1984

My impression is that Cobol is the best standardized of widely used languages.
Most Cobols have lots of implementation-specific extensions to deal
with screen packages, telecommunication monitors, and such, and I suspect
that the guy who was complaining wrote his programs without regard to what
was standard and what was not.

I've heard hearsay of Cobol programs many thousands of lines long being
ported changing only the environment division (a dozen lines, perhaps) which
is defined to be implementation specific.

John Levine, ima!johnl

PS:  How many other languages let you write:

	IF KICK-BACK GREATER THAN 10 AND LESS THAN 100 THEN ...

without having to mention kick-back twice?  They don't design them like they
used to.  Probably just as well.