Command Wait in COBOL?

Question

Is there a kind of "Wait" function in COBOL? I wrote a calculator, and to make it more 50s, i Print " Computing." "Computing.." ecc For example:

                   DISPLAY "SECONDO NUMERO"
                   ACCEPT B
                   COMPUTE C= A * B
                          DISPLAY "Computing"
                          DISPLAY "Computing."
                          DISPLAY "Computing.."
                          DISPLAY "Computing..."
                          DISPLAY "Computing...."
                          DISPLAY "Computing....."
                          DISPLAY "Computing......"
                          DISPLAY A "x" B " FA..."
                          DISPLAY C

Now, is there a way to make a little delay (half a second) on COBOL where I put the "Computing" piece? I created a github repo (https://github.com/aIDserse/Super-utility-Submachine-COBOL-CALCULATOR) to this project, look at it (refer to version 1.3) for the complete code (and maybye spread it hahah). Thx!!!

Answer 1

There is a statement for sleeping in standard COBOL, but only with COBOL 202x:

           CONTINUE AFTER arithmetic-expression SECONDS

As this standard is in the committee draft state it is hard to find an implementation, but as you've asked for GnuCOBOL - GnuCOBOL 3.1 already implements it.

Other than this there are some dialect specific library routines that can be used, like CALL "C$SLEEP" originating from ACUCOBOL-GT (also implemented with GnuCOBOL, but be aware that pre 3.1-versions only use the non-decimal part, so "0.9" will sleep zero seconds).

For OpenCOBOL/GnuCOBOL you can call the CBL_OC_NANOSLEEP/CBL_GC_NANOSLEEP library routines.

For any COBOL environment that can call native routines you have variants of CALL "sleep".

As mentioned by Rick Smith Many COBOL implementations also implement a callable SYSTEM where you may use something like a ping localhost with a timeout, but whatever you call may not be available (or the process running the COBOL environment has no access to it).

Stephen Gennard mentioned a very common extension:

           ACCEPT something WITH TIMEOUT

which has a "beware" that different environments use a different scale (some seconds, some milliseconds). This has the pro/con that the user can "break" out by pressing a key (normally a function key); and the additional issue that it may only work in "graphical" environments.

Anton's answer highlights the IBM library routine CEE3DLY.

Answer 2

There's no wait statement in any ISO Standard COBOL.

However, if you got built in system routines available either C$SLEEP (for seconds) or CBL_GC_NANOSLEEP (for nanoseconds) should do the trick.

Example (sleeps for half a second):

call "CBL_GC_NANOSLEEP" using "500000000" end-call

For IBM's Enterprise COBOL (LE enabled) the CEE3DLY routine is most suitable (there are also other legacy routines available).