From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail.schemamania.org (rrcs-50-75-19-234.nys.biz.rr.com [50.75.19.234]) by sourceware.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 673F23858426 for ; Mon, 27 Feb 2023 15:12:30 +0000 (GMT) DMARC-Filter: OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.2 sourceware.org 673F23858426 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; dmarc=none (p=none dis=none) header.from=schemamania.org Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=schemamania.org Received: from oak.schemamania.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by mail.schemamania.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A9A8256FB75 for ; Mon, 27 Feb 2023 05:32:47 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2023 05:32:46 -0500 From: "James K. Lowden" To: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: #include cobol Message-Id: <20230227053246.ec9d48a5cd3cbd67fd296fc6@schemamania.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.4.3 (GTK+ 2.24.28; x86_64--netbsd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,KAM_DMARC_STATUS,PDS_RDNS_DYNAMIC_FP,RDNS_DYNAMIC,SPF_HELO_PASS,SPF_PASS,TXREP autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6 X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.6 (2021-04-09) on server2.sourceware.org List-Id: To the GCC community and GCC Steering Committee: Greetings! We at COBOLworx would like GCC to consider our gcobol front-end for inclusion in the GCC project. We would like to contribute it to the GNU Toolchain and have it merged into GCC. We believe our work is further along than any previous GCC Cobol effort. As you may know, we have been working on the project for over a year. Much of the last 9 months have been devoted to testing for correctness. The compiler now passes the core module of the NIST CCVS-85 test suite. Although not ready for production use by any means, we expect to pass all relevant aspects of CCVS-85 later this year. Old as it is, Cobol is far from dead. Estimates run into billions of lines written, with millions more added each year, even today. But -- because there has never been a free, fully functional, source-to-machine compiler for it -- Cobol remains largely locked behind expensive, proprietary walls. GCC can change that. Cobol also offers a window into what was and might yet be. In Seibel's "Coders at Work", Fran Allen put it this way: "There was a debate between Steve Johnson, of Bell Labs, who were supporting C, and one of our people, Bill Harrison.... The nubbin of the debate was Steve's defense of not having to build optimizers anymore because the programmer would take care of it." and "By 1960, we had a long list of amazing languages: Lisp, APL, Fortran, COBOL, Algol 60. These are higher-level than C. We have seriously regressed since C developed." Modern hardware, and GCC's 100 optimization passes, are evidence Fran Allen was right. Cobol, with its 2 dozen high-level verbs and integrated I/O, provides a theoretical opportunity to surpass even C's performance in its problem domain, because the compiler has more information and more leeway. As a technical matter, to be sure we are far from achieving that goal. It is, as I said, an opportunity. As we hone our skills, we look forward to learning together with others to make it a reality. Signed, Marty Heyman, James K. Lowden, Robert Dubner