DATA DIVISION for defining a class instance method
The DATA DIVISION of an instance method
consists of any of the following four sections: FILE SECTION, LOCAL-STORAGE
SECTION, WORKING-STORAGE SECTION, and LINKAGE
SECTION.
About this task
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FILE SECTION - The same as a program
FILE SECTION, except that a methodFILE SECTIONcan defineEXTERNALfiles only. -
LOCAL-STORAGE SECTION - A separate copy of the
LOCAL-STORAGEdata is allocated for each invocation of the method, and is freed on return from the method. The methodLOCAL-STORAGE SECTIONis similar to a programLOCAL-STORAGE SECTION.If you specify the
VALUEclause on a data item, the item is initialized to that value on each invocation of the method. -
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION - A single copy of the
WORKING-STORAGEdata is allocated. The data persists in its last-used state until the run unit ends. The same copy of the data is used whenever the method is invoked, regardless of the invoking object or thread. The methodWORKING-STORAGE SECTIONis similar to a programWORKING-STORAGE SECTION.If you specify the
VALUEclause on a data item, the item is initialized to that value on the first invocation of the method. You can specify theEXTERNALclause for the data items. -
LINKAGE SECTION - The same as a program
LINKAGE SECTION.
If you define a data item with the same name in
both the DATA DIVISION of an instance method and
the DATA DIVISION of the OBJECT paragraph,
a reference in the method to that data-name refers only to the method
data item. The method DATA DIVISION takes precedence.