Cobol Hello World Example: How To Write, Compile and Execute Cobol Program on Linux OS

Question: I would like to understand the basics of how to write and execute Cobol program on Linux OS. Can you explain it with a simple example?

Answer: In this article, let us review very quickly how to write a basic Hello World Cobol program and execute cobol program on Linux or Unix OS.

1. Write a Hello World Cobol Program

Create the helloworld program using the Vim editor as shown below.

$ vim helloworld

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. HELLO-WORLD.
* simple hello world program
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
    DISPLAY 'Hello world!'.
    STOP RUN.

Note: Comment in Cobol starts with *.

2. Make sure Cobol Compiler is installed on your system

Make sure Cobol compiler is installed on your system as shown below.

$ whereis cobc
cobc: /usr/bin/cobc /usr/share/man/man1/cobc.1.gz

$ which cobc
/usr/bin/cobc

Installing cobc compiler

If you don’t have cobol compiler, install it as shown below.

$ sudo apt-get install open-cobol

3. Compile the cobol program

Compile the HelloWorld which will create the HelloWorld executable.

$ cobc -free -x -o helloworld-exe helloworld

$ ls
helloworld  helloworld-exe*

• -free – use free source format. Without this option cobol program requires certain format.
• -x – build executable program.
• -o FILE – place the output file into the specified FILE.

4. Execute the cobol Program

Execute by mentioning the program name.

$./helloworld-exe
Hello World!

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