From COBOL to OOP
Written for the experienced COBOL programmer, this nuts and bolts guide offers a comprehensive introduction to OOP techniques, and provides a migration of 10 million lines of COBOL code to object-oriented programming.
TABLE OF CONTENTS From COBOL to OOP
3.1: Replacement for the Data Division: Symbols and Data Types
3.1 Replacement for the Data Division: Symbols and Data Types
In our first tutorial section, we discuss symbols, standard types, declarations, and expressions. Various exercises will help us obtain an initial entry into the programming environment used to apply the newly acquired knowledge.
3.1.1 Symbols
Symbols in a program can be names, keywords, numbers, characters and strings, special characters, and comments. Names that name the things of a program have a few fundamental differences from those in COBOL, which are independent of the language.
Delphi particularity
In Delphi, a name has to begin with a letter, which can be followed by an arbitrary number of letters, numbers, or underscores (_____). The widely used dash in COBOL is not allowed. Also, uppercase and lowercase, as in COBOL, do not play any role; that is, Delphi is a "case-insensitive" environment.
Java particularity: Unicode
In Java, a name can be composed of Unicode characters, which means that (in contrast to COBOL), a name can contain, for example, German umlauts. A name must begin with a letter, dollar sign ($), or underscore (_____). In contrast to COBOL, names are "case sensitive" for example the name Account is not identical to the name account. The widely used dash in COBOL is not allowed, because a dash always represents the minus operation.
Table 3.1 shows a few names and indicates the programming languages in which they are valid.
| COBOL | Delphi | Java | |
|---|---|---|---|
| MR27XY | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 4X |
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