2. Objective
COBOL is one of the most widespread commercial applications languages in use
today. The course is aimed at developers to get the basic knowledge of COBOL
program development. This course covers all aspects of Programming with
COBOL.
The course teaches the design, writing and testing of COBOL programs.
Having studied this subject, the students should be able:
Develop Structured COBOL Programs
Understand and Use COBOL Verbs
Develop COBOL programs using the available verbs
Develop and Test COBOL print programs
Develop and Test COBOL programs accessing different types of files
3. Text Books
Text Book
Nancy Stern and Robert A Stern, 11th
edition, Structured
COBOL Programming, John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
Reference Book
M.K.Roy and D. Ghosh Dastidar, COBOL Programming,
Tata McGraw Hill, 2001, COBOL—85,2nd
Edition.
4. Introduction
Types of computer programs
Operating system programs
Application programs / Software
Types of Processing
Interactive – A point-of-Sale system
Batch processing – Payroll System (Large volume of
input at periodic intervals)
COBOL support both type of processing
Customized Application Package: Budget, Scheduling etc.
Machine language programs
Symbolic programs : translates to machine language by
5. Program Development Process
Determine the program specification
Design the program using program planning tools
Code the program
Compile the program
Test the program
Document the program
Compile the program
Source program
in symbolic
language
Object program
in machine
language
Translated by
compiler
6. Test the program
Debug during compile & test phase
Compile time errors: Syntax error e.g. ADD | AD
Misspelled reserved words
Missing punctuation
Execution errors: Logic error e.g. ADD instead of
Multiply
Run-Time error: Occurs if computer cannot execute
the instruction.
E.g.-
Attempt to divide by zero
Reading from a file that cannot be found.
7. Contents
History of COBOL
Features & Language Fundamentals
Program Structure
Coding Format for COBOL Programs
Character Set, Words, Data Names, Literals.
8. Nature of COBOL
popular Business-oriented language
Standard language
English-like language: Standard & business oriented
Relatively easy to understand- User friendly
Reference: http://www.ansi.org
9. History of COBOL
1959 – United States Department of Defense
1960 - COBOL initial specifications presented by CODASYL
(COnference on Data SYstems Languages)
1961 – COBOL 61
1964 – BASIC COBOL extended to Visual COBOL
1968 – ANSI (American National Standards Institute) developed
American National Standard (ANS) COBOL
1974 – ANSI published revised version of (ANS) COBOL
– Business applications needed to manipulate character as
well as numeric data
– String operations added
1985 – COBOL 85 Standards was introduced with revised
version of COBOL-74.
10. COBOL
What does COBOL stand for?
COmmon Business Oriented Language.
Which are target area of COBOL applications?
Defense, Aircraft, Insurance, Finance, Retail
etc.
(file & data oriented applications involved)
So we can say that COBOL is basically used for writing
business applications and not for developing system
software
11. Future of COBOL
COBOL is likely to remain an important language in the years
ahead
According to Datapro Information Services Group
about 150 billion lines of COBOL source code in
use
5 billion new lines added each year
Cobol is used by 42.7% of application
programmers in medium to large U.S. companies
$200 million revenues for 2001
12. Year 2000 Problem (Y2K)
Year stored as two digits in older programs to save
space
19 assumed as valid prefix for all years
95 represented year 1995
Invalid as prefix for years 2000 and beyond
00 could mean 1900 or 2000
13. Year 2000 Problem (Y2K)
Many calculations with dates incorrect starting in 2000
To find your age if you were born in 1970
Subtract 70 from 95 (95 - 70 = 25)
Calculation incorrect for year 2000 and beyond
00 - 70 = -70 when age should be 30
14. Year 2000 Problem (Y2K)
To correct problem
Billions of lines of code, many written in COBOL
needed to be examined
Code changed to use four digits for year
Age, other calculations now correct
1995 - 1970 = 25
2000 - 1970 = 30
2012 – 1988 = 24
15. Improving Program Design
Two techniques used to develop programs that are easier to
understand, test, debug and modify
Structured Programming
Top-Down Programming
16. Structured Programming
Eliminates use of GO TO statements
Allowed skipping to different sections of program without
returning to starting point
Program logic easier to follow with "GO-TO-less"
programming
17. Structured Programming
Program divided into paragraphs
Structured programming follows logical control constructs
that make program easier to read, modify, and debug.
Main paragraph or module controls logic flow using
PERFORM statements
Main module "performs" other modules when instructions in
that module required
Each module can be written and tested independently of
others
18. Top-Down Programming
Another technique to make programs easier to understand,
test, debug and modify
Develop program like term paper
Develop outline first
Add details for each of main steps
Add further refinement for more complex steps
19. Top-Down Programming
For COBOL program
Code main modules or routines first
Code intermediate modules next
Details deferred to minor modules and coded last
20. COBOL – Program Structure
Principal portions of a program.
There are 4 divisions –
a) Identification (Required)
b) Environment (Optional)
c) Data (Optional)
d) Procedure (Required)
User defined chunk of code
which consists of one/more
paragraphs.
e.g.
a) U000-CHECK-LOG SECTION.
b) FILE SECTION.
User defined chunk of code
which consists of one/more
sentences.
e.g.
a) P000-PRINT-FINAL-TOTALS.
b) PROGRAM-ID.
A SENTENCE consists of one or
more statements and is
terminated by a full stop.
e.g. a) MOVE .21 TO VAT-RATE
b) COMPUTE VAT-AMOUNT =
PRODUCT-COST * VAT-RATE.
PROGRAM
DIVISIONS
SECTIONS
PARAGRAPHS
SENTENCES
STATEMENTS
A STATEMENT consists of a
COBOL verb and an
operand or operands.
e.g.
SUBTRACT T-TAX FROM GROSS-
PAY GIVING NET-PAY
CHARACTERS
RESERVED WORDS
USER DEFINED WORDS
21. Example
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. Multiplier.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 Num1 PIC 9 VALUE ZEROS.
01 Num2 PIC 9 VALUE ZEROS.
01 Result PIC 99 VALUE ZEROS.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
DISPLAY "Enter first number (1 digit) : " .
ACCEPT Num1.
DISPLAY "Enter second number (1 digit) : “.
ACCEPT Num2.
MULTIPLY Num1 BY Num2 GIVING Result.
DISPLAY "Result is = ", Result.
STOP RUN.
22. 1. DIVISIONS
A DIVISION is the largest unit in the COBOL program and is a
collection of SECTIONs and/or paragraphs. Every COBOL
program is divided into four DIVISIONS.
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION
Identifies the program to the computer. It also provide
documentation about the program
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION
Define file-names and describe computer equipment used by the
program
DATA DIVISION
Describe input and output format used by the program. Also define
constants and work areas necessary for processing the data
PROCEDURE DIVISION
Instructions for reading input, processing and creating output
23. 2. SECTIONS
A SECTION is a collection of related paragraphs.
The IDENTIFICATION DIVISION doesn’t contain any
SECTIONs, the ENVIRONMENT AND DATA DIVISIONs
have pre-defined SECTIONs that you may or may not
include, depending on the requirement and the
PROCEDURE DIVISION may contain only user defined
SECTIONs.
A user defined SECTION is indicated by a user-defined word
followed by the reserved word SECTION.
It is used mainly to divide the executable program into units
that can be loaded and executed independently.
Thus, a program larger than the memory size can be
accommodated in memory.
24. 3. PARAGRAPHS & 4. SENTENCES
3)
A paragraph is a collection of sentences that form a
logical unit in a COBOL program.
It is the basic unit of organisation of a COBOL
program and is referred by a user-defined name in
the program.
4)
A sentence is a sequence of one or more statements,
ending with a period.
25. 5. STATEMENTS
A statement is a valid combination of a COBOL verb and its
operands.
It specifies an action to be taken by the object program.
The COBOL statements can be broadly classified into two
types -
Imperative statements
An imperative statement begins with a verb and
specifies an unconditional action to be taken.
Conditional statements.
A conditional statement is one in which the action to be
taken is determined by some condition that is evaluated
when the program is executed.
26. 6. RESERVED WORDS
A reserved word is a character-string with a predefined
meaning in a COBOL source program.
There are several types of reserved words in COBOL.
Keywords:- appear in uppercase.
Eg ADD, READ etc
Optional Words:- They improve readability.
Eg GIVING, AFTER etc
Figurative constants:- Refer to constant values.
Eg ZEROES, SPACES etc
27. 7. USER DEFINED WORDS
They are constructed and used by the application
programmer.
They are normally used to define paragraph names,
SECTION names, file names, temporary variables,
etc.,
The following are the rules for forming user-defined
words.
Length may be up to 30 characters.
Only letters, digits and hyphen (-) are allowed.
Embedded blanks are not allowed.
At least one character must be alphabetic.
Cannot be COBOL reserved words.
May not begin or end with hyphen.
28. 8. CHARACTERS
The most basic and indivisible unit of the COBOL
language is the character.
The COBOL character set includes 78 characters that can
be classified as letters of the alphabet, digits and special
Characters.
29. COBOL coding sheet
Column numbers
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 . . . . . . . 72 80
Column
numbers
* Area A Area B
I
D
E
N
T
I
F
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
A
R
E
A
-
/
30. COBOL coding rules
Each line is considered to be made up of 80 columns.
Columns 1 to 6 are reserved for sequence numbers.
1 to 3 ---Page Number. 4 to 6 ---Line Number
Column 7 is an indicator column and has special
meaning to the compiler.
Hyphen ( - ) indicates continuation.
Slash ( / ) indicates comment line , forces page break when
printing source listing.
Asterisk ( * ) indicates comment line, no such page ejection.
Columns 8 to 11 are called Area A. All COBOL DIVISIONs,
SECTIONs, paragraphs and some special entries must begin in
Area A.
Columns 12 to 72 are called Area B. All COBOL statements must
begin in Area B.
31. COBOL coding sheet
Almost all COBOL compilers treat a line of COBOL
code as if it contained two distinct areas. These are -
AREA A
*) Between Column 8 to 11
*) Division, Section, Paragraph
names, FD entries & 01
level entries must start in
Area A
AREA B
*) Between Column 12 to 72
*) All Sentences & Statements
start in Area B
32. coding rules
Columns 73 to 80 are identification area. Anything written in
this area , will be ignored by the compiler but will appear in the
source listing.
Columns 1-6 and 73-80 optional and rarely used today
Column 7 for continuation, comment, starting new page
Columns 8-72 for COBOL program statements
Column 7
/ (slash) forces page break when printing source listing
* (asterisk) designates entire line as comment
- (dash) to indicate continuation of nonnumeric literal
33. Margin Rules
Columns 8-72 divided into two areas
Area A - columns 8, 9, 10, 11
Area B - columns 12-72
Division, section and paragraph-names must all begin in Area
A
First letter of name must begin in column 8, 9, 10 or 11
Entry may extend into Area B
All other statements, clauses, and sentences begin anywhere
in Area B (column 12, 13, 14, etc.)
Select entries in ENVIRONMENT DIVISION
Data description entries in DATA DIVISION
All PROCEDURE DIVISION instructions
37. Character Meaning
Space
+ Plus sign
- Minus sign or hyphen
* Asterisk
/ Forward slash or solidus
= Equal sign
$ or £ Currency sign
, Comma
; Semicolon
. Decimal point or period
" Quotation mark
( Left parenthesis
) Right parenthesis
> Greater than
< Less than
A-Z (26) Alphabet (uppercase)
a-z Alphabet (lowercase)
0-9 (10) Numeric characters
38. COBOL Words
0-9 , A-Z and - Hyphen
The total no of character must not be greater than 30.
One of the character must be a letter.
A word cannot begin with Hyphen.
A word must not contain a blank or special character except
Hyfen (-)
A Cobol word can be User defined or reserve word
Valid words Invalid Words
GROSS-PAY -Gross-
OVERTIME-HOURS OVERTIME HOUR
A 1-2-3
B12-4 More than 30 characters
39. Data names and Identifiers
Data names are named memory locations.
Data Names must be described in the DATA DIVISION before
they can be used in the PROCEDURE DIVISION.
Can be of elementary or group type.
Can be subscripted for Arrays.
Are user defined words.
Ingle data name or a data name qualified, indexed or
subscripted is normally referred to by the general term
identifier.
Valid data names: A12 sum-natural net-pay
Invalid: DATA ADD 45 46+2A
40. Rules for forming User-defined words/Data
names
Can be at most 30 characters in length.
At least one alphabetic character.
Only alphabets, digits and hyphen are allowed.
Blanks are not allowed.
May not begin or end with a hyphen.
Should not be a COBOL reserved word like
ADD,SUBTRACT,MOVE,DISPLAY etc….
41. Data-Name Guidelines
1. Use meaningful data-names that describe contents of field
2. Use prefixes or suffixes in data-names when appropriate
• -IN and -OUT for fields (Emp-Salary-IN and Emp-Salary-
OUT)
• -FILE and -RECORD for file and record names
• Emp-File or Emp-Record
• Amount-Due-In instead of A1
42. Identify the valid data-names
• Identify the valid data-names
1. Date-Of-Birth
2. Amount$Out
3. -First-Name
4. 98-6
5. Time out
6. ADD
43. Literals
Literals are symbols whose value does not change in a program.
A data name may have different values at different points of time
whereas a literal means the specific value which remains
unchanged throughout the execution of the program. For this
reason a literal is often called a constant.
Example--- MOVE 0 to sum. (Here 0 is literal)
There are 3 types of literals namely
(1) Numeric literals.
(2) Non-numeric literals.
(3) Figurative constants.
44. Rules for Numeric Literals
1. A numeric literal can be formed with the help of digits only.
2. The maximum number of digits allowed in a numeric literal
varies from compiler to compiler. can have a maximum of
18 digits.
3. + or - sign may be included to left of first digit.
4. Decimal point permitted within literal. May not follow last
digit.
Valid numeric literals
23 , +2359.4 , .125 , -68734
45. Rules for Nonnumeric Literals
• Composed of characters which are enclosed within quotation
marks.
• Generally used for output messages or headings.
• Any character in COBOL character set except quotation mark.
• The maximum number of characters that are allowed is compiler
dependent. ANSI 74: 120 characters.
Valid Nonnumeric Literals
“123 Main St.” “$14.99”
“12,342” “Enter a value from 1 to 10”
46. Figurative Constants
These are literals representing values that may be frequently
used by most programs.
These are given some fixed names and when the compiler
recognizes these names it sets up the corresponding values
in the object program.
Example--- MOVE ZERO TO sum.
MOVE SPACES TO REPORT-REC.
The following is the list of figurative constants and their
meanings.
47. Figurative constants Meaning
ZERO(S) or ZEROES Represents the value 0, one or
more depending on the context
SPACE(S) Represents one or more spaces
HIGH-VALUE(S) Represents the highest value
LOW-VALUE(S) Represents the lowest value
QUOTE(S) Represents single or double
quotes
ALLALL literalliteral Fill With Literal
Literals – Figurative Constants
48. Figurative Constants - Examples
01 GrossPay PIC 9(5)V99 VALUE 13.5.
MOVE TO GrossPay.
01 GrossPay PIC 9(5)V99 VALUE 13.5.
MOVE TO GrossPay.
ZERO
ZEROS
ZEROES
01 StudentName PIC X(10) VALUE "MIKE".
MOVE ALL "-" TO StudentName.
01 StudentName PIC X(10) VALUE "MIKE".
MOVE ALL "-" TO StudentName.
StudentName
M I K EM I K E
GrossPay
0 0 0 1 3 5 0
49. Figurative Constants - Examples
01 GrossPay PIC 9(5)V99 VALUE 13.5.
MOVE TO GrossPay.
01 GrossPay PIC 9(5)V99 VALUE 13.5.
MOVE TO GrossPay.
ZERO
ZEROS
ZEROES
01 StudentName PIC X(10) VALUE "MIKE".
MOVE ALL "-" TO StudentName.
01 StudentName PIC X(10) VALUE "MIKE".
MOVE ALL "-" TO StudentName.
StudentName
- - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - -
GrossPay
0 0 0 0 0 0 0
50. Continuation of Lines
A statement or an entry may be continued to the area B of the
next line as and when necessary.
A hyphen(-) is used in the indicator field for continuation of
lines.
Actually, a hyphen in the indicator field means that the first non-
blank character in the area B of the current line is the character
immediately following the last non-blank character of the
previous line.
Example—In case of non numeric literal
Indicator line Area A Area B
Continued line “Enter the
Continuation Line - “Number”.
51. Is Cobol still used ?
75% of all business data is processed in COBOL.
There are between 180 billion and 200 billion lines of
COBOL code in use worldwide.
15% of all new applications (5 billion lines) through 2009 will
be in COBOL.
During the 1950s, the western parts of the world experienced a tremendous need for a high level programming language suitable for business data processing. To meet this demand the U.S. Dept of Defence convened a conference on the 28th and 29th of May, 1958 to highlight and stress the importance of a high-level business data processing language. The conference led to the formation of a team called CODASYL (Conference On DAta Systems Language). This team had representatives from civil and governmental organisations, academics, computer manufacturers and other software enthusiasts to work towards the goal. As a result, a new language called COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) was developed in September 1959. This was released with some minor modifications in April 1960. On May 5, 1961, COBOL-61 was published with some more revisions. It is this version which provided the foundation for later versions. In 1965, a re-revised version of COBOL was released with a number of additional features. However, it was only in 1968 that COBOL was approved by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) as a standard language for commercial use. This version of COBOL is known as COBOL-68. The next revised official standard was released in 1974 and is known as COBOL-74.
What does COBOL stand for? CO mmon B usiness O riented L anguage. Which are target area of COBOL applications? Defense, Aircraft, Insurance, Finance, Retail etc (file & data oriented applications involved) So we can say that COBOL is basically used for writing business applications and not for developing system software
The Constituents of a COBOL Program – DIVISIONS A DIVISION is the largest unit in the COBOL program and is a collection of SECTIONs and/or paragraphs. Every COBOL program is divided into four DIVISIONs viz. IDENTIFICATION DIVISION, ENVIRONMENT DIVISION, DATA DIVISION and PROCEDURE DIVISION. SECTIONS A SECTION is a collection of related paragraphs. The IDENTIFICATION DIVISION doesn’t contain any SECTIONs, the ENVIRONMENT AND DATA DIVISIONs have pre-defined SECTIONs that you may or may not include, depending on the requirement and the PROCEDURE DIVISION may contain only user defined SECTIONs. A user defined SECTION is indicated by a user-defined word followed by the reserved word SECTION. It is used mainly to divide the executable program into units that can be loaded and executed independently. Thus, a program larger than the memory size can be accommodated in memory. PARAGRAPHS A paragraph is a collection of sentences that form a logical unit in a COBOL program. It is the basic unit of organisation of a COBOL program and is referred by a user-defined name in the program. SENTENCES A sentence is a sequence of one or more statements, ending with a period. STATEMENTS A statement is a valid combination of a COBOL verb and its operands. It specifies an action to be taken by the object program. The COBOL statements can be broadly classified into two types viz. Imperative statements and Conditional statements. An imperative statement begins with a verb and specifies an unconditional action to be taken. On the other hand, a conditional statement is one in which the action to be taken is determined by some condition that is evaluated when the program is executed. RESERVED WORDS A reserved word is a character-string with a predefined meaning in a COBOL source program. There are several types of reserved words in COBOL. 1) Keywords :- appear in uppercase. Eg ADD, READ etc 2) Optional Words :- They improve readability. Eg GIVING, AFTER etc 3) Figurative constants :- Refer to constant values. Eg ZEROES, SPACES etc USER DEFINED WORDS They are constructed and used by the application programmer. They are normally used to define paragraph names, SECTION names, file names, temporary variables, etc., The following are the rules for forming user-defined words. 1) Length may be up to 30 characters. 2) Only letters, digits and hyphen (-) are allowed. 3) Embedded blanks are not allowed. 4) At least one character must be alphabetic. 5) Cannot be COBOL reserved words. 6) May not begin or end with hyphen. CHARACTERS The most basic and indivisible unit of the COBOL language is the character. The COBOL character set includes 78 characters that can be classified as letters of the alphabet, digits and special characters.
COBOL CODING RULES a) Each line is considered to be made up of 80 columns. b) Columns 1 to 6 are reserved for line numbers. c) Column 7 is an indicator column and has special meaning to the compiler. It can have - i) Asterisk ( * ) indicates comments ii) Hyphen ( - ) indicates continuation iii) Slash ( / ) indicates form feed d) Columns 8 to 11 are called Area A. All COBOL DIVISIONs, SECTIONs, paragraphs and some special entries must begin in Area A. e) Columns 12 to 72 are called Area B. All COBOL statements must begin in Area B. f) Columns 73 to 80 are identification area.
Almost all COBOL compilers treat a line of COBOL code as if it contained two distinct areas. These are - AREA A *) Between Column 8 to 11 *) Division, Section, Paragraph names, FD entries & 01 level entries must start in Area A AREA B *) Between Column 12 to 72 *) All Sentences & Statements start in Area B
DATA NAMES *) Data-names are named memory locations. They must be described in the DATA DIVISION before they can be used in the PROCEDURE DIVISION. *) They can be of elementary or group type and further can be qualified or subscripted. *) They are user-defined words.
RULES FOR FORMING USER-DEFINED WORDS USER DEFINED WORDS need to be as per the following rules - 1) They are used to form section, paragraph and data names. 2) They can be at most 30 characters in length. 3) Only alphabets, digits and hyphen are allowed. 4) Blanks are not allowed. 5) They may not begin or end with a hyphen. 6) They should not be a COBOL reserved word.
LITERALS A Literal is a symbol whose value does not change in a program. It is also known as constant. There are three types of literals in COBOL namely – a) Numeric literal b) Non-numeric literal c) Figurative constant
FIGURATIVE CONSTANTS FIGURATIVE CONSTANTS are reserved words that refer to specific constant values. The following are figurative constants and their meanings. ZERO/ZEROS/ZEROES Represents the numeric value zero (0), or one or more occurrences of the nonnumeric character zero (0), depending on context. When the context cannot be determined, a nonnumeric zero is used. SPACE/SPACES Represents one or more blanks or spaces. SPACE is treated as a nonnumeric literal. HIGH-VALUE/HIGH-VALUES Represents one or more occurrences of the character that has the highest ordinal position in the collating sequence used. For the EBCDIC collating sequence, the character is X'FF'; for other collating sequences, the actual character used depends on the collating sequence indicated by the locale. Note that HIGH-VALUE is treated as a nonnumeric literal. LOW-VALUE/LOW-VALUES Represents one or more occurrences of the character that has the lowest ordinal position in the collating sequence used. For the EBCDIC collating sequence, the character is X'00'; for other collating sequences, the actual character used depends on the collating sequence indicated by the locale. Note that LOW-VALUE is treated as a nonnumeric literal. QUOTE/QUOTES Represents one or more occurrences of the quotation mark character ("). QUOTE or QUOTES cannot be used in place of a quotation mark to enclose a nonnumeric literal.