Re: [open-cobol-list] Sort utility within OC

[John R. Culleton]

On Thursday 24 May 2007 17:52, address@hidden wrote:
> That is very true. (and has been considered as an alternative).
>
> But it is more convenient to maintain a single parm card versus a
> COBOL program (in my opinion).
>
> This is especiallly true when it comes to the OUTREC statements,
> for creating additional output files.
>
> This is probably more for me, since I have been working with SORT
> on the mainframe for over 7 years and like the flexiblity of it.
>
On Linux we also have the sort command line utiity. A simple 
translator from your parameter card to the Linux sort command  string 
would be easy to write---in COBOL.   But this requires Linux which 
probably would be a major shift for your company.   However the 
latest Slax version of Linux comes on a self booting CDR and could be 
configured to contain COBOL (that module is not available yet for 
Slax.) Slax will both read from and write to NT partitions, which 
puts it ahead of most Linux self-loading distros like Knoppix. And it 
is lean and mean.   

I like Slax as a kind of camel's nose under the tent, introducing the 
Linux-frightened in management to the benefits of a 
programmer-friendly OS. 

Maybe I will work on putting OC or Tiny in a Slax module.  That would 
be a fun project for the weekend! 


-- 
John Culleton
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