Jean E. Sammet
ABSTRACT
It has often been stated that one of the faults of COBOL is its lack of rigorous definition, particularly with regard to the PROCEDURE DIVISION. It is the purpose of the paper to refute this contention, by defining the syntax of the COBOL PROCEDURE DIVISION using the same metalinguistic formulae as those used for ALGOL. Although a knowledge of both languages is extremely desirable, it is not required, since the complete paper is self-contained (except for semantic material which is directly available in the references, and has not been reproduced as part of the paper.)
- 1.Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60, edited by Peter Naur, Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, Vol. 3, May 1960. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- 2.COBOL 1961: Revised Specifications for a COmmon Business Oriented Language, Report to Conference on Data Systems Languages, forthcoming publication of Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
- 3.Sammet, Jean E., "A Method of Combining ALGOL and COBOL", WJCC Proceedings, 1961.Google Scholar
- 4.Irons, Egar T., "A Syntax Directed Compiler for ALGOL 60" Communications of the ACM, Vol. 4 (January 1961)51-55. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- A definition of the cobol procedure division using algol metalinguistics
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