COBOL to ascii conversions

I have a bunch of data files along with COBOL copybooks. I need to convert these COBOL data files to ascii. I suspect I'll need to use pack/unpack to get at these data, but I don't have the foggiest notion where to begin. I do have perlpacktut and Pack/Unpack Tutorial, I have not read them as yet but will start as soon as I finish this post.

The copybooks I have look like this:

        01  CLASS-OUT.
            05  CCNUM-OUT               PIC  X(14).
            05  CCDESC-OUT              PIC  X(40).
            05  CL-OUT                  PIC  X(14).
            05  CLDESC-OUT              PIC  X(38).
[download]

       01  MASTER-OUT REDEFINES HEADER-RECORD.
            05  CC-NUMBER                   PIC  9(04).
            05  MTD-UNITS                   PIC  S9(07).
            05  MTD-DOLLARS                 PIC  S9(09).
            05  INV-ON-HAND                 PIC  S9(07).
[download]

I also have a COBOL reference that tells me that 'PIC X(14).' tells me that the data field is a 14-byte alpha-numeric field and that PIC S9(07) is a 7-byte signed integer. I'm just not sure how to get Perl to pass this as ascii.

I would really appreciate any suggetions on how to start.

Thanks!!!

Update: This is on an HP-UX with Perl 5.6.1

Sweetblood

Comment on COBOL to ascii conversions Select or Download Code
Re: COBOL to ascii conversions by VSarkiss (Monsignor) on Dec 03, 2004 at 21:07 UTC
You probably mean EBCDIC, which is an encoding, not COBOL, which is a language. You can use EBCDIC-to-ASCII converters (most often in mainframe file transfer programs). After that, you have a plain, fixed-width, ascii file to work with. It's usually a lot simpler than trying to do the EBCDIC conversion yourself. As an aside, there are COBOL fields that are a pain to parse (COMP fields, specifically), but if you have plain X and 9 fields, you're OK. Update For example, once you have it in ascii, you can handle your first record with something as simple as: `($ccnum_out, $ccdesc_out, $cl_out, $cldesc_out) = unpack('A14 A40 A14 A38', $class_out);` [download] Assuming `$class_out` contains the whole line. For more details on `unpack`, take a look at perlfunc:pack. Do not rebuke them with harsh words ... but rather lead them gently - with URLs - so that they may learn wisdom.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: COBOL to ascii conversions by fglock (Vicar) on Dec 03, 2004 at 21:27 UTC
Check the Encode module: `use Encode; ... from_to($data, "EBCDIC", "ASCII");` [download]	[reply] [d/l]


Think about Loose Coupling
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COBOL to ascii conversions

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