TODO

GnuCOBOL TODO						-*- outline -*-

1 Pending requests

1.1 Handling of EBCDIC files


2 Other features to be implemented

2.1 New option handling.

A new configuration file, cobc.conf, is described in
https://sourceforge.net/p/open-cobol/feature-requests/342/
Integrate that file with existing command-line parsing,
allowing for overrides and warning-defeats as outlined in
that document.  

2.2 New preprocessor support.

https://sourceforge.net/p/open-cobol/feature-requests/341/ defines
configuration for preprocessors.  Add support for preprocessors to cobc.
Modify the -E option to be

	-E [preprocessor]

meaning that all preprocessors should be run up to and including the
one named in the -E argument.  If no argument is provided, -E
continues to work as currently.  

2.3 Embedded SQL - ship as sample configurations for 2.2

esqlOC - preprocessor by Sergey Kashyrin.Sergey Kashryin (ODBC)

ocesql - https://github.com/opensourcecobol/Open-COBOL-ESQL (MySQL/ODBC)

PostgreSQL using epcpg, wrapper for COBOL by Frank Polscheit (ruby based)
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnucobol-users/2004-02/msg00053.html

Firebird (firebird.sourceforge.net) has a SQL preprocessor
for their database.

Oracle Pro*COBOL


3 Improvement of compiler internals

3.1 Error checking

3.1.1 Strict error checking depending on the standard
Partially implemented

3.1.2 Use `error' token in the parser for better error recovery


4 Optimization

4.1 More inlining of run-time functions

Done with various binary operands and expressions, open for some
intrinsic functions (actually using libcob at compile time).


5 Debugging support

5.1 Data access method

We should generate all data hierarchy defined in a COBOL program
with all relevant information, including data names, picture clauses,
and source locations.  We should also define a debugging function
that receives a data name and displays its value using the generated
data hierarchy.  By calling the function from gdb, we can easily
access the COBOL data at debugging time.


6 Better user manual

Yes, we should, for now: refer to the GnuCOBOL Programmer's Guide
https://sourceforge.net/p/open-cobol/code/HEAD/tree/external-doc/guide/