Welcome to GNU Cobol
====================

Hello from GNU Cobol.

These simple programs are meant as early introductions to GNU Cobol and COBOL
programming.

Compiling
=========

To try out the samples, either type **make** or::

    cobc -x hello.cob
    cobc -x bigworld.cob

followed by::

    ./hello
    LC_ALL=en_HK.utf8 ./bigworld

to run the programs.  The last one showing::

    Hello, world
 
    On Sunday, September 27, 2013 at 12:00:00 EST, according to UN estimates:
    You were home to some   7,182,044,470 people,
    with an estimated worth of     $188,186,945,661,617.40


To learn more during the compile stages try::

    cobc -x -v hello.cob
    cobc -x -v bigworld.cob

which shows the various commands used to build GNU Cobol executable programs
from the COBOL source code.

Cheers from the GNU Cobol contributors.
