{{refimprove|date=February 2014}}{{Infobox programming language | name = COMTRAN | released = {{Start date|1957}} | developer = Bob Bemer | influenced by = FLOW-MATIC | influenced = COBOL | website = }}
COMTRAN (COMmercial TRANslator) is an early programming language developed at IBM. It was intended as the business programming equivalent of the scientific programming language FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator). It served as one of the forerunners to the COBOL language. Developed by Bob Bemer, in 1957, the language was the first to feature the programming language element known as a picture clause.
Contributions to COBOL
Several elements of COMTRAN were incorporated into COBOL:
Picture clause.
Paragraphing: dividing code into paragraphs (with line breaks not significant).
Paragraph names. Assigning names to paragraphs, and jumps ({{code|GO TO}}'s) are to a paragraph name, not to a line number.
{{code|AT END}} clause on file input operations.
Figurative constant {{code|HIGH-VALUE}}.
Passing a numeric value ({{code|RETURN-CODE}}) back to the operating system when the program terminates.
Picture clause
{{main|Picture clause}}
A picture clause element defines the length of any given datum, much like a dictionary defines words. In particular a picture clause determines whether the datum contains letters and numbers, and other characteristics of the data, including format, size, and data type.
Sample program
This is a sample COMTRAN program, doing payroll calculations.[1]
References
1. ^See the example on page 87 of the IBM F28-8043 Commercial Translator General Reference Manual, June 1960 (pdf, 8.2M)
Further reading
IBM's Early Computers, by Charles Bashe, Lyle Johnson, John Palmer, and Emerson Pugh, 1986, MIT Press, {{ISBN|0-262-02225-7}}.
External links
Genealogy Programmers Solve Y2K in 1958
IBM Commercial Translator General Reference Manual (pdf, 8.2M) Page 87.
2 : Procedural programming languages|Programming languages created in 1957