COBOL has had XML parsing for a while, and has generation. Of late it uses the z/OS System Service. For JSON parsing (parsing only so far) it also uses the existing z/OS System Service.
So Enterprise COBOL has native parsing/generation for XML and native parsing for JSON. It has nothing native for CSV. Probably for anything new JSON would be better, followed by XML, followed by CSV, followed by fixed-width fields (are they really so difficult for others to process?). It is true that fields in CSVs have no "type", but an Excel Macro, which runs from a button, to load a specific CSV, and which checks the date (being for the expected business date, not "run-date") and logical file-name on the "header", and totals one or more numeric fields, and counts the data-records, and compares them to a trailer, and backs up the previous spreadsheet, and renames and saves the source files (so that a previous situation can be recovered, or new functionality in the spreadsheet can be run with prior data), can mean that the spreadsheet already knows what the formats are (and the data is known to be for the correct day, the correct file, and is unlikely to have lost/gained/changed records and is not an incomplete file) gets around that issue and also has the other stated benefits. These are what I remember from '91. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
