Problem:
How can one access locale date/time within Cobol?
Resolution:
This demo demonstrates using strftime to format the local time in the default representation for the current locale:
$set sourceformat(free) mf
working-storage section.
01 time-parameters.
03 time-now pic x(4) comp-5.
01 localtime-parameters.
03 localtime-tm pointer.
01 strftime-parameters.
03 locale-time pic x(60).
03 buffer-size pic x(4) comp-5.
03 format-string pic xxx value z"%c".
procedure division.
*> Get current time in UTC
call "time" using by reference time-now
*> Translate to local timezone
call "localtime" using by reference time-now returning localtime-tm
*> Translate to string representation of date and time in current
*> locale
move length of locale-time to buffer-size
call "strftime"
using
by reference locale-time
by value buffer-size
by reference format-string
by value localtime-tm
*> Remove C null-byte string terminator
inspect locale-time replacing all x"00" by " "
*> Display the result
display locale-time
stop run.
Sample output, on RedHat EL4
> export LANG=en_GB
> cobrun demo
Mon 05 Mar 2007 17:28:17 GMT
> export LANG=es_ES
> cobrun demo
lun 05 mar 2007 17:28:44 GMT
