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“ (TYCb24H 1998)

Introduction

Written in a clear, easy to follow format, this book was designed to help you learn COBOL as quickly as possible.

The numerous real-world examples and exercises in this book will help you to understand computer programming, and COBOL in particular. This book provides a complete grounding in the COBOL language. After completing this book, you should be able to write useful and meaningful computer programs using COBOL.

Who Should Read This Book The lessons in this book assume no previous computer programming experience. The lessons can be used as an introduction to COBOL specifically, and computer programming in general. Even experienced COBOL programmers, who want to find out the latest techniques available in the current COBOL standard, will find this book valuable.

This book contains the following special elements that make the presentation clearer and easier to understand:

• New Term Boxes

• Notes

• Tips

• Cautions

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New terms and definitions are explained in New Term boxes. These are introduced throughout the lessons as required by the material being covered.

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Interesting information relating to the discussion is presented in these notes.

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Tips and interesting shortcuts are represented in this manner, for easy recognition. Tips can help make your coding easier and more accurate.

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Common pitfalls and misconceptions are presented as cautions. When a caution appears, you can be assured that the potential problems discussed occur in the real world of COBOL programming.

Throughout the lessons, full and partial examples from actual programs are listed. When a complete program is included in the text, it will be signified with a listing heading. This serves to offset the full program listings from the text. You will often find explanations of the programs embedded in the listings. The listing itself will appear in an easy to identify, monospace font. A simple listing example follows:

Listing Introduction.1 Hello World

000001 @OPTIONS MAIN 000002 Identification Division. 000003 Program-Id. Hello. 000004 Environment Division. 000005 Configuration Section. 000006 Source-Computer. IBM-PC. 000007 Object-Computer. IBM-PC. 000008 Data Division. 000009 Procedure Division. 000010 Hello-Start. 000011 Display “Hello World”. 000012 Stop Run. The lines in the program are numbered so that I can refer to them later in the text, explaining the different elements of the program. The goal is to prevent the code from being unwieldy for the user—that's you!

Q&A and Workshop Following each chapter, you'll find a “Q & A” section, where issues relating to the material covered in the lesson are discussed. Selected areas are reinforced and explanations are expanded.

In the Sams Teach Yourself in 24 Hours series, usually after the Q&A section, you will find a quiz and a programming exercise. However, to conserve pages, in Sams Teach Yourself COBOL in 24 Hours, we have opted to move this information to the CD-ROM accompanying the book. This information is not just extraneous stuff we're adding to beef up the CD. Answering the quiz questions correctly assures you that the material covered has been completely understood. The programming exercises build on the concepts covered in the chapter and require you to make that small, but essential extra leap in understanding to solve the problem. Some are simple modifications of programs discussed within the chapter, whereas others are completely new programs that need to be created. For optimum retention and understanding, I urge you to work through the quiz questions and exercise section as you finish an hour.

Conventions Used in This Book This book uses special typefaces to help you differentiate between text used to explain the concepts, and the elements of the COBOL language. Anytime a reserved COBOL word is used, or a data item is encountered, it will appear in a special monospace font.

The CD-ROM that comes with the book contains the Fujitsu compiler and the third-party GUI screen design tool, COBOL sp2 from Flexus International. In addition, the source code for all the examples and exercises is included. To aid you in understanding the examples, each is accompanied by a Lotus Screencam™ movie, which can be found in the \CAMS directory of the CD-ROM.

Thane Hubbell Bryan, Texas December 1998

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