COBOL Phoenix Translates Legacy COBOL to Python and Verifies Behavior Against GnuCOBOL

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A developer built COBOL Phoenix, an open-source tool that converts COBOL programs into Python while checking that the output matches the original. The project includes a custom COBOL front end that flags unsupported constructs rather than silently dropping them, and a runtime that reproduces COBOL's decimal handling, rounding, and sign behavior. Verification compares results against GnuCOBOL using generated test inputs and mutation analysis to confirm the test suite catches injected faults. Reported results include 127 of 127 sample cases matching GnuCOBOL, 180 of 180 on an independent insurance underwriting program, and 20 programs parsed without errors. The project was created for the Kiroween 2026 hackathon and is available under the Apache-2.0 license.

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