IGYCRCTL and GnuCOBOL.

[Harsh Deol]

Hi,

We know that COBOL compiler on mainframe uses IGYCRCTL as the program to compile a program. Is the same program used by any other compiler to compile the program? Like in GnuCOBOL what is used?

[Robert Sample]

IGYCRCTL is specific to IBM mainframes and the COBOL language. Different languages use different programs.

GnuCOBOL translates the COBOL code into C and then uses a C compiler (typically whatever compiler is available on the specific platform) to compile the translated code.

[Kishan Mathew]

This is very interesting. Does that mean we can work with that compiler too of GnuCOBOL? I mean like modifying it?

[Robert Sample]

Have you modified a lot of compilers in your day? If not, be aware that they are not easy to modify (correctly). One of my professors (way back when) told my class that the rule of thumb is that compilers are about three times more difficult to write / modify than application programs, and operating systems are three times more difficult than compilers.

Furthermore, why on earth would you want to modify the C compiler used by GnuCOBOL? I cannot conceive of any modifications that would be needed to it.