Paul wrote:

> I guess I didn't read it as claiming that COBOL can do what
> C++ can do.
> It's just making a statement that COBOL has abilities that
> are often overlooked,
> and has had an "object oriented" type capability, long before
> that became a buzz
> word.
>
Paul, I agree.  I think the point that was being made is that "oo" is rooted
deep into the beginnings of anything for which you start to lay a
foundation, i.e. reusable code.  Thus once written, no need to reinvent.
And you can take a library of routines, and put them into an SL, XL or
whatever.  Like one person mentioned previously, the concept of "dll"
existed on the HP way before Microsoft came up with it.

Cobol can actually go much further than standard business oriented tasks.
Many think that you cannot perform recursion in Cobol, but in fact you can.
One such way is to compile the code into an XL, then call itself from there.

jds