off topic - cobol program question

[Bob Rasmussen]

On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, tom heine wrote:

> Hi,
>
> We have a client who is running a program on sco unix
> written in cobol (its called keypoint).   we need to figure out
> how to run a couple of reports from cron.

Tom,

Examine the command that is used to initiate the program. You will
probably find that it is a shell script that eventually runs some sort of
COBOL runtime, such as runcbl, and names the COBOL object program to run.

The initial program is probably a main menu program, that reacts to the
user selection by running a program that does the particular task.

You MAY be able to construct a command that is almost like the initial
program, but where the name of the program to run is changed.

However, if the program in question requires keystrokes, that may be
difficult, because the program may not allow piped input.

Another approach is to script the operation on a PC, through an emulator.

HTH.

Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

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