I've been working/struggling with COBOL and Perl for the last year, so I would be extremely interested in seeing something of this nature on CPAN. The struggling comes from COBOL, I assure you. Everyone knows there's nothing wrong with Perl! ;)

My needs are generally not (data|data layout) conversion oriented, but I could certainly use a module that parsed COBOL data layouts and plopped them into Perl data structures.

I would like to see a way to deal with the myriad of different COBOL dialects out there. It seems I am continuously reworking my scripts in order to deal with yet another COBOL dialect that my benevolent and sage employers have seen fit to jump right in to. Different dialects of COBOL (Unisys, Microfocus, IBM, Tandem, VAX, Wang, etc.) often handle data in different ways. The differences are usually subtle, but very important. Especially when dealing with comp fields. Would it make sense to have a base module implemented under ASCII COBOL (or some other standard) guidelines with other dialect specific modules available that would override the appropriate portions of the base?

I know we are discussing a COBOL-data toolkit, but how about parsing COBOL code in general? I am just now starting to really research what is already out there so please be gentle on a newbie to the monastery! The same concerns over dialect apply here as well.