On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 4:46 PM, Robert W.Mills <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
> For many years I have used macros to make my life easier. When I left the
> e3000, back in 2008, and did some work on other platforms I found I missed
> them. I'm now in semi-retirement and have been using the free version of MF
> COBOL (a couple of years) and GnuCOBOL (this last year) to write software
> for friends, family and my own use.
>
> A couple of times since 2008 I had thought of writing by own macro
> preprocessor to emulate the one on the e3000. A few months ago I decided to
> do it and release it as open source under the GNU GPL. The development of
> preprocessor, using GnuCOBOL, is now completed and in final Beta Testing
> and I'm writing the manual. Was hoping that I could some additional
> reasons, from others, as to why you would use macros instead of the
> copy...replacing and replace statements.
>
> As a port of GnuCOBOL is a available on several platforms, and my
> preprocessor is written in GnuCOBOL, I see no problem in taking my macros
> with me nearly every wherever I go. If I end up doing work on a platform
> that does not support a feature that it is using it shouldn't be to
> difficult to develop a work-a-round.
>

well done and congratulations!

do my mis-firing neurons recall that gnucobol was formerly open
cobol...which was actually very close to mpe cobol?  (or something like
that?)

anyhow....i inherited a outstanding collection of macros at one job. many
of them were 'toolbox' functions.  want to center a string and the overall
length of the string doesn't matter?  got a macro for that...  want to use
a 'db' call? got a macro for that....  these went far beyond modifying code
at compile time -- and that's what made them so valuable (at least to me).

      - d 'who obviously thinks macros are cool'

-- 
Donna Hofmeister
Allegro Consultants, Inc.
408-252-2330
Visit us on Linkedin
<https://www.linkedin.com/company/allegro-consultants-inc->

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