Modern COBOL tour (2014+)

COBOL 2014

The 2014 standard brought JSON PARSE and GENERATE, XML PARSE and GENERATE, the CONSTANT phrase, and many scope terminators that make nested logic readable. GnuCOBOL implements most of it today.

Unicode

Modern compilers handle UTF-8 as a program encoding, so COBOL programs can read and write the same text files as every other tool on the box. PIC X stays byte-oriented, but the encoding flag makes the bytes meaningful.

COBOL 2023

The 2023 standard adds more OO refinements, dynamic capacity tables, and better interoperability. The practical advice is unchanged: keep the four-division structure, declare everything in DATA DIVISION, and let the compiler check your work.

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Article author: Arthur Isaev