A new version of COBOL was released in 2023.

This is amazing!

The "DELETE FILE" statement is particularly interesting. It suggests that file system access is handled by special syntax rather than by a standard library. I don‘t know of any other language doing that.

Financial institutions around the world will rejoice!

@Lensflare the reason behind this makes sense, Files are essentially what you would associate with Tables. So now you can delete tables as a first party instruction. This is genuinely huge.

And yeah, filesystem in that sense is being entirely handled by COBOL with special behind the scenes logic, since when using it for mainframe systems, you don't want to deal with that in the first place.

@thebiochemic not sure if I can follow. What is the connection between files and tables? And what does it have to do with special syntax?

It might not be sexy, but it’s honest work.

@lotd honest work that really pays

@Lensflare i'm not exactly sure on the details, but on IBM Systems for example (among others) it kinda abstracted away reading and writing from and to files into some direct connection of table structure. You can still manipulate files regularly (like in other languages) but you also have the option to use files directly in selections, if you have defined their structure.

I atleast remember doing some interface work in the past with that stuff.

COBOL devs have 400k/yr salaries

from the same paragraph: "There is as yet no known complete implementation of this standard"

for real? so they have specs but no compilator which could make use of all those features?

60k$1st.

wow a language as old as cobol didnt havr XOR yet 😅

@NeatNerdPrime they will probably not support the new version and just worry about making sure the legacy version can still run