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Category:COBOL: Difference between revisions
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{{stub}}{{language|COBOL
|exec=machine
|strength=strong
|checking=static
|safety=strong
|gc=no
|parampass=both
|express=explicit
|tags=cobol
|LCT=yes
|bnf=http://www.cs.vu.nl/~x/grammars/cobol/}}
COBOL, an acronym for 'COmmon Business Oriented Language', is one of the oldest programming languages, being created in 1959. It was designed by a CODASYL (Conference on Data System Languages) committee with Grace Hopper. It is primarily used in business, finance and administration for companies and governments. It is primarily an imperative, structured language, with support for object-oriented programming added in 2002.
===Versions===
* '''COBOL 1965''' added some new features to the original specification.
* '''ANS COBOL 1968''' is the first COBOL standard and was published by [[ANSI]]. It was created to improve compatibility between the different versions of the language.
* '''COBOL 1974''' added a few more features to the language, including the ability to <code>ACCEPT</code> the date, day and time; and the file organization clause.
* '''COBOL 1985''' added many new features to COBOL, notably including: scope terminators (<code>END-IF</code>, <code>END-READ</code>, etc.), the <code>EVALUATE</code> verb, the <code>CONTINUE</code> verb, inline <code>PERFORM</code> statements, the ability to pass arguments by content, and the deprecation of the infamous <code>ALTER</code> verb. This standard was followed by various amendments in 1989 and 1991.
* '''COBOL 2002''' is the current version of COBOL and was published by [[ISO]] as ISO/IEC 1989. It included a host of new features, most notably including object-oriented programming. However, they were also other features including: floating-point support, portable arithmetic results, pointers, calling conventions to other languages, function prototypes, [[XML]] facilities and support for execution within framework environments.
{{language programming paradigm|Imperative}}
{{language programming paradigm|Object-oriented}}
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