CobCash

A fixed-format COBOL app that imitates a transaction at a cashier till.

• Author: Ethan Kletschke
• Version: 1.0.0
• Developed and Tested On: Windows 11
• Targeted Platform: Windows 10 and above
• License: MIT
• Project Metadata File: project.yaml

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• CobCash
  • About the App
  • Disclaimers
    • About This Project
    • Known Limitations and Bugs
  • Features of This Project
  • Running the App

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About the App

This program is a mockup of a cashier till application. You input the cardholder's name, their 5-digit card PIN, amount owed (to pay), and the amount paid via card. The program then validates the input values, displays a processing screen for two seconds, and displays a payment summary. The app then generates a receipt in the form of a text file (Receipt.txt).

Disclaimers

About This Project

• All COBOL source code intentionally follows fixed format, as this is what I prefer and am used to using for COBOL programming. Future COBOL projects will utilise free format.
• The meta folder contains project metadata files that are not used for running the app.

Known Limitations and Bugs

• GnuCOBOL’s implementation of the COBOL SCREEN section is somewhat finicky with user input.
  • The decimal points (.) in the numeric inputs are "glued" in place, and cannot be overwritten unless backspace is pressed (but this leads to another bug).
  • There is a chance that user input can overflow into different fields if the entered number is longer than the target field.
  • It is recommended to use the arrow keys to navigate to different fields.
  • Furthermore, if you press backspace in the numeric inputs, it'll remove the placeholder characters (i.e. 0 and .) and make input even more confusing.
    • To fix this, just use the arrow keys to navigate out of that field. This will refresh the formatting of that field.

Features of This Project

• Items, payment, processing, output, and error screens defined in the SCREEN section.
• Build and linting scripts for Windows CMD
• File handling with a sequential file
• Comprehensive data structures in the DATA division
• Generating a text file receipt with COBOL's Report Writer Control System (RWCS)

Running the App

To run the app, unzip the .zip that will be provided in the latest release of this repository, and run the .exe.

GnuCOBOL is not a fully static compiler like GCC. It generates native executables, but they depend on the GnuCOBOL runtime libraries (DLLs) to run — similar to how Python or .NET applications require their runtime to be present.
Because of this, GnuCOBOL DLLs are required when running the application on Windows. The provided .zip should include all necessary DLLs. However, if the program starts and reports missing DLLs, please open a GitHub issue and include screenshots of the error messages — especially the names of any missing DLLs — so they can be added.

You can build the application from source, but on Windows this is not recommended unless you already have a working GnuCOBOL + MinGW setup. Configuring the toolchain and collecting all required runtime DLLs can be difficult and error-prone.

For this reason, a pre-built GnuCOBOL distribution (such as Arnold Trembley's amazing binaries) was used to build the provided binaries, and the release ZIP includes the DLLs needed to run the program on Windows.

If you do build from source and encounter missing DLL errors, please report them via a GitHub issue so they can be documented or included in future releases.