A simple "Hello, world" program in COBOL

Recently I decided to start learning some COBOL (never had it in university). I’m using the excellent book by Michael Coughlan, “Beginning COBOL for Programmers” - the author’s vast teaching experience shows through in this excellent book.

Beyond COBOL, I plan to start learning about mainframes as well. Why? Well, why not?

In that vein, here is a simple “Hello, world” program in ANS COBOL (I’m using gnucobol on macOS):

      *> Display "Hello, world" on the screen
       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
       PROGRAM-ID. HelloWorld.
       AUTHOR. Timmy Jose.
       DATE-WRITTEN. 19th APR 2020.
       DATA DIVISION.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       01 DisplayMessage PIC X(12) VALUE "Hello, world".
       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
       BEGIN.
           DISPLAY DisplayMessage
           STOP RUN.

Running it:

~/dev/playground$ cobc -x HelloWorld.cob && ./HelloWorld
Hello, world

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