COBOL NOTES PAGE

Here you will find miscellaneous comments and information pertaining to COBOL.

With the AFTER ADVANCING option, an additional byte must be provided by the programmer at the beginning of the record area. That byte is used by COBOL for the control character (ASA standard) and is determined by either the contents of first-byte-field PIC X or by the value of the integer in the AFTER ADVANCING clause.

NEXT SENTENCE will push control to the sentence following the period (just after the ending delimiter of the outside IF statement). CONTINUE will drop to the sentence following the END-IF but will stay within the outside IF statement. This is an important consideration with nested IF statements but no problem when there is just one IF/ELSE/END-IF.

Know the difference between READ and READ INTO as well as WRITE and WRITE FROM.

The next note will go here .... please email if you have something that should be included.