Waitgroups in COBOL
Our program demonstrates the concept of parallel processing in COBOL. While COBOL doesn’t have direct equivalents to goroutines or WaitGroups, we can simulate similar behavior using the COBOL SORT
verb with multiple input procedures.
This COBOL program simulates parallel processing using the SORT
verb with input and output procedures. Here’s how it works:
We define a
WORK-FILE
to store worker records.In the
MAIN-PROCEDURE
, we initialize the work file and then use theSORT
verb. TheSORT
verb in COBOL can be used to simulate parallel processing by allowing multiple input procedures to run concurrently.The
WORKER-PROCESS
procedure starts five workers. Each worker is simulated in theSTART-WORKER
procedure.In
START-WORKER
, we display a message when the worker starts, useCBL_OC_NANOSLEEP
to simulate work (sleeping for 1 second), and then display a completion message. The worker’s ID is then released to the sorted work file.The
DISPLAY-RESULTS
procedure reads the sorted work file and displays the completion messages in order.
To run this COBOL program, you would typically compile it and then execute the resulting binary. The exact commands may vary depending on your COBOL compiler and environment.
Note that while this COBOL program simulates concurrent execution, true parallel processing capabilities in COBOL are limited and depend on the specific COBOL implementation and underlying system. Modern COBOL environments may provide additional features for multi-threading or parallel processing.