Simplifying coding

You can use coding techniques to improve your productivity. By using the COPY statement, the format 2 SORT statement, COBOL intrinsic functions, and Language Environment® callable services, you can avoid repetitive coding and having to code many arithmetic calculations or other complex tasks.

If your program contains frequently used code sequences (such as blocks of common data items, input-output routines, error routines, or even entire COBOL programs), write the code sequences once and put them in a COBOL copy library. You can use the COPY statement to retrieve these code sequences and have them included in your program at compile time. Using copybooks in this manner eliminates repetitive coding.

To sort a table, you can use the format 2 SORT statement to simplify coding. It provides a much simpler way compared to the format 1 SORT statement.

COBOL provides various capabilities for manipulating strings and numbers. These capabilities can help you simplify your coding.

The Language Environment date and time callable services store dates as fullword binary integers and store time stamps as long (64-bit) floating-point values. These formats let you do arithmetic calculations on date and time values simply and efficiently. You do not need to write special subroutines that use services outside the language library to perform such calculations.