What are we talking about? Show us the code. Well, ok.

Is this what usage could look like?

DISCLAIMER
The COBOL might be a bit rusty (1987) and the perl is definitely a little speculative :-) so if I made mistaeks please correct them, but do not bother to check matching ({[< and the like - I didn't - the code is not meant to be run yet. It is meant to illustrate the questions and comments below the code.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# ModuleWithAcceptableNameThatReflectsThePurpose Q1
use COBOLstorage;

$datafile="somepathtothedata.coboldata"; 

$COBOLrecord = <<'FD1';                         # C1    
      * paymenttrack-file 
         01 Payment.
            03 Rec-id                pic X(6)     value "PAY001".   
            03 Date                  pic X(10)    value spaces.  
            03 EEEE-MM-DD Redefines Date.
               05 EEEE               pic 9999. 
               05 FILLER             pic X. 
               05 MM                 pic 99. 
               05 FILLER             pic X. 
               05 DD                 pic 99. 
            03 Amount              pic 9(12)V99 comp-3 value zeroes.
            03 Currency-code         pic XXX      value spaces.
            03 Description.
               05 Desc-line occurs 4 pic X(50)    value spaces.
            03 Originator.
               05 Ident-type-code pic x value spaces. 
      *                              'P' Natural person
      *                              'B' Business
      *                              'N' National/Local Gov Agency
      *                              'S' Supranational Agency
               05 Ident.
                  07 Accountnumber pic 9(10) comp-3 value zeroes.
                  07 N-Name.     
                     09 Familyname   pic X(36) value spaces. 
                     09 Title        pic X(6)  value spaces.  
                     09 Initials     pic X(6)  value spaces.
                     09 FILLER       pic X(10) value spaces.  
                  07 O-Name redefines N-Name.     
                     09 OrganisationName pic X(48). 
                     09 Contact-nick pic X(10).
                  07 Address.  
                     09 Street       pic X(48)  value spaces.  
                     09 Nr           pic X(8)   value spaces.  
                     09 Postal-code  pic X(7)   value spaces.  
                     09 Country-code pic XX     value spaces. 
           03 Beneficiary.
               05 Ident-type-code pic x value spaces. 
      *                              'P' Natural person
      *                              'B' Business
      *                              'N' National/Local Gov Agency
      *                              'S' Supranational Agency
               05 Ident.
                  07 Accountnumber pic 9(10) comp-3 value zeroes.
                  07 N-Name.     
                     09 Familyname   pic X(36) value spaces. 
                     09 Title        pic X(6)  value spaces.  
                     09 Initials     pic X(6)  value spaces.
                     09 FILLER       pic X(10) value spaces.  
                  07 O-Name redefines N-Name.     
                     09 OrganisationName pic X(48). 
                     09 Contact-nick pic X(10).
                  07 Address.  
                     09 Street       pic X(48)  value spaces.  
                     09 Nr           pic X(8)   value spaces.  
                     09 Postal-code  pic X(7)   value spaces.  
                     09 Country-code pic XX     value spaces. 
FD1

open(IN,$datafile);

associate($blurk,$COBOLrecord);    # Q2;

my $total = 0;
while(<IN>) {

    $blurk = $_;

#========== this is where the module magic should take effect: 
# we can now use the COBOL data-item in perl.

    if ( $Description =~ /(?:salary|gage)/i ) {
        if ($Beneficiary.ident-type-code ne 'P') {  # Q3
            
            print << "WARNING";                 # C2 
                Check this! Salary paid to organisation?:  
                On $Date $Originator.Accountnumber paid $Beneficiary.A
+ccountnumber
                $Currency-code $Amount BENY: $Beneficiary.Organisation
+Name $Beneficiary.Contact-nick
                \"$Description\"\n"
                WARNING
            }
        else {
            $total{$Currency-code} += $Amount;
            }    
        }
}

print "Total salaries / gages in USD $total{"USD"} \n";
[download]

So here is the preliminary list of questions:

• Q1: What should the name be - preferrably something more fitting than "COBOLstorage" used here.
• C1: In actual practice this would come from a copylibrary or dictonary. I put it here in the code to open it up for critique / amendments.
• Q2: What should be the ways to associate (both lvalues and rvalues, where appropriate) data with a specific COBOL-FD or WS entry, the COBOL way of structuring? I used "associate" here, but I think that may be to generic. "tie" comes to mind, but "tie" is richer than what I imagine this module should do, because "tie" also takes care of really reading and storing the data if necessary. The module however should (IMO) limit itself to parsing and composing COBOLdata.
• Q3: Is this going to be the perl 6 way of qualifying data? $Bigstructure.partofbigstructure.iteminpart If so, let's go for that.
• C2: This syntax is hopefully going to be ok in perl 6.

The example leaves a lot of questions unanswered:

• - What abouts arrays ?
• - occurs depending on, how? (should it be @Description in the example print-statement?)
• - 66, 88 levels
• - initialising, writing COBOL-data
• - machine dependencies
• - locale dependencies

... we can only start at one place at a time. Maybe you could reflect on this, or on your vision of how you would name / use this module.

HTH,

      Danny