Have you ever wanted to just cut and paste some of that legacy COBOL code from mainframe applications into your latest Web application? No? Well, Romanian Web developer Bizău Ionică has developed a way to do just that, creating a COBOL bridge for Node.js, the JavaScript-based cross-platform runtime environment that has become a go-to technology for server-side Web development. The plugin is an attempt to breathe new life into the programming language derived from the work of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Hopper.

Published under the “Kindly” license (as in, if you want to use it in a commercial application, you should “kindly ask the author”), Node COBOL requires you install GNUCobol along with it. COBOL code can then be embedded in JavaScript. Here’s an example provided by Ionică:

// Dependencies var Cobol = require("cobol"); // Execute some COBOL snippets Cobol(function () { /* IDENTIFICATION DIVISION. PROGRAM-ID. HELLO. ENVIRONMENT DIVISION. DATA DIVISION. PROCEDURE DIVISION. PROGRAM-BEGIN. DISPLAY "Hello world". PROGRAM-DONE. STOP RUN. */ }, function (err, data) { console.log(err || data); }); // => "Hello World" Cobol(__dirname + "/args.cbl", { args: ["Alice"] }, function (err, data) { console.log(err || data); }); // => "Your name is: Alice" // This will read data from stdin Cobol(function () { /* IDENTIFICATION DIVISION. PROGRAM-ID. APP. *> http://stackoverflow.com/q/938760/1420197 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION. INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION. FILE-CONTROL. SELECT SYSIN ASSIGN TO KEYBOARD ORGANIZATION LINE SEQUENTIAL. DATA DIVISION. FILE SECTION. FD SYSIN. 01 ln PIC X(64). 88 EOF VALUE HIGH-VALUES. WORKING-STORAGE SECTION. PROCEDURE DIVISION. DISPLAY "Write something and then press the key" OPEN INPUT SYSIN READ SYSIN AT END SET EOF TO TRUE END-READ PERFORM UNTIL EOF DISPLAY "You wrote: ", ln DISPLAY "------------" READ SYSIN AT END SET EOF TO TRUE END-READ END-PERFORM CLOSE SYSIN STOP RUN. */ }, { stdin: process.stdin , stdout: process.stdout }, function (err) { if (err) { console.log(err); } }); // => Write something and then press the key // <= Hi there! // => You wrote: Hi there! // => ------------

Ionică notes on his GitHub page that Node COBOL is ready for use in production—though he knows of no one who is doing so as of yet.