I would totally be on board to help with an open-source COBOL parser - but Aristotle's reply is sadly the most accurate assessment I've ever heard of this entire approach to modernization. It can be done, but you're not going to end up with code that's based on the same mental constructs that it would have been had it been written (or rewritten) in Perl.
However, it *would* run on non-mainframes, and you'd have a path forward. Eventually. I'll bet you could end up with code that was *accessible* to a Perl programmer - COBOL's mostly about record and string manipulation to start with, and so is Perl. It would most definitely be a fascinating project to hack at. On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 7:57:07 PM UTC+2, clueless newbie wrote: > > Digression: Company "A" has lots of COBOL. Attempts are being made to > "translate" some of this COBOL to Perl. Currently, the approach is to use > Perl's regexes as a means of generated helper code. > > I suspect that the process is doomed and will result in failure. I > have no idea if the goal of getting off the mainframes is just a public > goal or a real goal. -- But enough of that. > > Question given Marpa and the existence of a BNF for COBOL, can the problem > of parsing COBOL and generating passable Perl be done? If so where does one > start and where does one go for assistance --- it's not like Joe down the > street knows anything about Marpa? > > Thanks, > > A Totally Clueless Newbie > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "marpa parser" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
