Doing The Waltz

What a great post on dancing COBOL. Here is some more COBOL dancing to build on the idea. Recursion, local scope, classes and beer all in the same program!

Thanks for the mention of the 99 bottle code Robert. I saw your post and thought I should raise the bar. I few comments on my post on 99 bottles (here) suggested that local variable scope, recursion and other cool stuff is missing from COBOL. Totally untrue! Here is a COBOL program which shows off the new 'quoteless' type syntax which we are working on and at the same time shows off a few of the OO features in the standard Micro Focus COBOL for .net product which is already out there:

      $set sourceformat(free)
     
   class-id. "Singer".

     method-id. "main" public static.
         procedure division.
         invoke type Singer::SayLine(by value 100)
     end method "main".
     
     method-id. "SayLine" public static.
     
        01 bottle-word     string.
        01 count-word      string.

        procedure division using by value bottles as binary-long.
            if bottles equals 0 then
                display "Go to the store and buy some more, 99 bottles of beer on the wall."
                goback
            end-if
            add -1 to bottles
               evaluate bottles
                   when 0
                       move "No"      to count-word
                       move "bottles" to bottle-word
                   when 1
                       move bottles   to count-word
                       move "bottle"  to bottle-word
                   when 2 thru 99
                       move bottles   to count-word
                       move "bottles" to bottle-word
               end-evaluate
              
               if bottles not equals 99 then
                   display "Take one down and pass it around, " count-word::"ToLower"()
                           " more " bottle-word " of beer on the wall."
               end-if
                          
               display count-word " " bottle-word
                   " of beer on the wall, " count-word::"ToLower"()
                   " " bottle-word " of beer."
                  
            invoke type Singer::SayLine(bottles)
        end method "SayLine".
        
      end class "Singer".

As you can see, this is a pure recursive implementation demonstrating the local scope of the method variables.