cobc command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix cobc command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

cobc: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: cobc: command not found

Solutions to cobc: command not found

How To Fix cobc: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu cobc is provided by gnucobol4 package.

gnucobol4 is:

GnuCOBOL (formerly OpenCOBOL) is a free, modern COBOL compiler. GnuCOBOL implements a substantial part of the COBOL 85, COBOL 2002 and COBOL 2014 standards and X/Open COBOL, as well as many extensions included in other COBOL compilers (IBM COBOL, MicroFocus COBOL, ACUCOBOL-GT and others).

GnuCOBOL translates COBOL into C and compiles the translated code using a native C compiler.

Build COBOL programs on various platforms, including GNU/Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. GnuCOBOL has also been built on HP/UX, z/OS, SPARC, RS6000, AS/400, along with other combinations of machines and operating systems.

While being held to a high level of quality and robustness, GnuCOBOL does not claim to be a “Standard Conforming” implementation of COBOL.

GnuCOBOL passes over 9600 of the NIST COBOL 85 test suite tests and over 750 internal checks during build.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install gnucobol4

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install gnucobol4.

sudo apt -y install gnucobol4

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install gnucobol4

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix cobc command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.