GnuCOBOL Features & History

GnuCOBOL translates COBOL source code to native executable via intermediate C, designated C compiler and linker. Usually the C compiler is gcc, but we think others are possible.

The latest official release is 2.2, but version 3, available as a nightly snapshot, is recommended for new code.

Features

• A complete implementation of COBOL with nearly seamless C integration
• Over 9740 NIST COBOL 85 test suite tests passed, over 1000 internal checks
• Dialect support for
  • ACUCOBOL-GT
  • BS2000
  • COBOL2002
  • COBOL2014
  • COBOL85
  • IBM
  • MVS,
  • MicroFocus
  • RM/COBOL
  • X/Open
• Supports REPORT SECTION, SCREEN SECTION, and FUNCTION-ID
• Almost full support of the COBOL 2014 Compiler Directing Facility feature set
• EXEC SQL preprocessors available for PostgreSQL, Firebird, ODBC, and DB2
• Direct access to C libraries
• Multiple screen libraries available including Java (AWT/SWING) and GTK+ based
• Contributed Code integrates
  • Ada
  • Guile
  • Javascript
  • Lua
  • Python
  • Rexx
  • others
• CGI capable and desktop ready
• Compiler and runtime messages translated; English, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, German, and French

Environments

• Compiler built with GNU Autotools and GCC. It is expected to build and run under any Unix-like system. It also successfully builds with LLVM clang and VisualStudio, and a build was published for z/OS OMVS/USS
• ASCII, EBCDIC, little endian, big endian.

Copyright 2001-2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

GnuCOBOL is a free software.

• The compiler, cobc, is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the FSF; either version 3, or (at your option) any later version.
• The run-time support library, libcob, is licensed under the LGPL.

You can redistribute it and/or modify either one under the terms of their licenses.

Credit

• OpenCOBOL was written by Keisuke Nishida and Roger While, from 2001 to 2012. GnuCOBOL is also authored by Simon Sobisch, Ron Norman, Edward Hart, Sergey Kashyrin, Dave Pitts and Brian Tiffin. Many others listed in the FAQ.
• OpenCOBOL 1.1 became GNU Cobol 1.1 in 2013, and is now spelled GnuCOBOL.
• A GnuCOBOL Programmer's Guide, by Gary Cutler and Vincent Coen, can be found at https://open-cobol.sourceforge.io, along with lots of other documentation.