Albol (stylized as ALBOL, a portmanteau of "album" and "COBOL") is a 2025 (surprisingly!) project written entirely in (GNU) COBOL. It is a command line interactive utility that stores information about albums. It is available under the GNU Public License Version 2 (see LICENSE.md for more).

Using Albol, it is possible to add albums to a library (containing an artist and a title) and give them ratings. Based on these ratings and albums, it Albol generates statistics. Also, you can store individual tracks, and connect them with albums.

The first step to run Albol is to compile it. The provided make.sh file can be used for this purpose. It depends on the GnuCOBOL compiler (check if it exists using the command cobc). After running it, execute the file located at ./bin/out from the location where you want your record files (album-list.txt) to be stored.

Rating is supposed to range from 1.00 to 5.00. There are three significant figures of precision available. A rating of 0 is interpreted as an absense of a rating.

Similarly, " " is interpreted as an absence of a title or artist. Use "?" for unknown titles or artists.

To cut a record, you ought to have the correct capitalization.

Navigate through the menus by entering your selected option. Note that it usually suffices to enter the four first characters of your selected option for the system to recognize it.

Enter a unique album name, an artist, and a rating (0 for unrated). This will create a record of this album. Rating should be 1.00 to 5.00. Album titles and artists are case-sensitive.

Enter the name of an album (not case-sensitive). You will receive its artist and rating.

Enter the name of an artist (not case-sensitive). You will receive a list of all their albums (beautifully and painfully centered), their average rating, and its standard deviation.

A simple list of all albums and their artists. For statistics on all albums execute more > stats.

Input an album title. You will receive its details. You may choose to edit some element of it. Entering the first character of the option suffices.

Enter a unique pair of title and album and a track number (1-99). This will create the track.

Enter a pair of title and album, verify it is correct, and the track will be removed in a similar way to albums being removed with more > cut.

Enter an album title. You will receive a list of all its tracks. If the tracks are not correctly ordered by track number, execute more > sort.

Will remove all albums and tracks.

Will create the files necessary for Albol, if they do not yet exist. This is necessary when first running the program.

Enter the name of an album (case-sensitive) and verify it is correct. Then, it will be removed. (However, the space occupied by it in the record file will not be removed, just emptied so that it can be reused.)

This sorts the record files. For album-list.txt, this is based on the titles of the albums. For track-list.txt, it is based on the title of the albums, and then the track number.

This gives statistics for the whole list of albums.

Exits the application.