Detailed Description of COBOL

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the technical aspects of COBOL (common business oriented language). COBOL is divided into three divisions. The PROCEDURE DIVISION can be left virtually unchanged in moving the program from one computer to another, while the DATA DIVISION may or may not require revision. The ENVIRONMENT DIVISION contains information that is completely computer dependent. The characters used in COBOL are the letters, the numerals, punctuation marks, and other characters that are used in formulas, relations, and editing. COBOL allows up to three levels of subscripting, and they are always written from left to right in order of importance. The PROCEDURE DIVISION specifies the operations that must be performed to solve a given problem. The basic element of the PROCEDURE DIVISION is a verb and its operands, which denote an action to be taken. The user has complete control over the way he builds up his program from the basic element—the verb—subject only to the specified rules.