Cobol preprocessor bug

I get the following error when testing:

peter@peterspc:~/exercism/cobol/collatz-conjecture$ bash test.sh
CobolCheck: INFO 2026-04-02T18:52:13.819916Z INF001: Attempting to load config from config.properties.
CobolCheck: INFO 2026-04-02T18:52:13.825289Z INF002: Loaded config successfully from config.properties.
CobolCheck: INFO 2026-04-02T18:52:13.825364Z INF003: Cobol-Check starting
CobolCheck: INFO 2026-04-02T18:52:13.825397Z INF005: Log level is INFO.
CobolCheck: INFO 2026-04-02T18:52:13.825412Z INF006: Configuration settings: production.
CobolCheck: INFO 2026-04-02T18:52:13.849964Z INF014: Error log for the test suite parser is set to: /home/peter/exercism/cobol/collatz-conjecture/ParserErrorLog.txt.
CobolCheck: INFO 2026-04-02T18:52:13.854835Z INF013: Output for generated COBOL test program is set to: /home/peter/exercism/cobol/collatz-conjecture/test.cob.
SYNTAX ERROR in file: : /home/peter/exercism/cobol/collatz-conjecture/tst/collatz-conjecture/collatz-conjecture.cut
Unexpected token on line 3, index 1:
Following
Expected [alphanumeric-literal, numeric-literal, boolean-value, fieldname, EXPECT, cobol-token, TESTSUITE, TESTCASE, MOCK, END-MOCK, VERIFY, parenthesis-enclosed, >, <, NOT, =, >=, <=, TIME, TIMES]
Got

SYNTAX ERROR in file: : /home/peter/exercism/cobol/collatz-conjecture/tst/collatz-conjecture/collatz-conjecture.cut
Unexpected token on line 7, index 1:
Following
Expected [AFTER EACH, AFTER-EACH, TESTSUITE, TESTCASE, MOCK]
Got

Exception in thread “main” org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.exceptions.PossibleInternalLogicErrorException: org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.exceptions.TestSuiteSyntaxException: The test suite(s) contained one or more errors. See the error log for more details
at org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.workers.Generator.mergeTestSuite(Generator.java:105)
at org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.workers.Generator.prepareAndRunMerge(Generator.java:75)
at org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.Main.main(Main.java:23)
Caused by: org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.exceptions.TestSuiteSyntaxException: The test suite(s) contained one or more errors. See the error log for more details
at org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.features.testSuiteParser.TestSuiteParser.getParsedTestSuiteLines(TestSuiteParser.java:694)
at org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.features.testSuiteParser.TestSuiteParserController.parseTestSuites(TestSuiteParserController.java:101)
at org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.workers.Generator.processingBeforeEchoingSourceLineToOutput(Generator.java:130)
at org.openmainframeproject.cobolcheck.workers.Generator.mergeTestSuite(Generator.java:92)
… 2 more
COMPILE AND RUN TEST
test.cob:1: error: PROGRAM-ID header missing

Can you please add some more information:

  • How did you get the exercise to your computer?
  • Which files are in the directory of the exercise?
  • Which file(s) did you edit?
  • What is the code inside these file(s) now?
    • Please use codeblocks (grafik for this)

Working locally usually is the advanced way to work with the exercises. Did you try the website integrated online editor? What happens, when you copy your code in there?