I was thinking the other day - what with the Visual Basic compiler for Java, it would make sense for there to be a COBOL compiler for Java. That way we could draw on yet another large body of software to run on top of the Java runtime.

Okay, so I get strange thoughts occasionally.

Of course the first step would be a grammer to parse the language .. the next step then would be a compiler to convert that to byte codes.

Well ... this guy A JavaCC grammar for Cobol found one here

Hurm... It's under the LGPL so someone who has a hankering could take it and run with it.