A definition of the cobol procedure division using algol metalinguistics

It has often been stated that one of the faults of COBOL is its lack of rigorous definition, particularly with regard to the PROCEDURE DIVISION. It is the purpose of the paper to refute this contention, by defining the syntax of the COBOL PROCEDURE DIVISION using the same metalinguistic formulae as those used for ALGOL. Although a knowledge of both languages is extremely desirable, it is not required, since the complete paper is self-contained (except for semantic material which is directly available in the references, and has not been reproduced as part of the paper.)