REPLACE statement

A REPLACE statement can occur anywhere in the source text that a character-string can occur. It must be preceded by a separator period except when it is the first statement in a separately compiled program. It must end with a separator period.

The REPLACE statement provides a means of applying a change to an entire COBOL compilation group, or part of a compilation group, without manually having to find and modify all places that need to be changed. It is an easy method of doing simple string substitutions. It is similar in action to the REPLACING phrase of the COPY statement, except that it acts on the entire source text, not just on the text in COPY libraries.

If the word REPLACE appears in a comment-entry or in the place where a comment-entry can appear, it is considered part of the comment-entry.

Format 1

Each matched occurrence of pseudo-text-1 in the source text is replaced by the corresponding pseudo-text-2.

Format 2

Any text replacement currently in effect is discontinued with the format-2 form of REPLACE. If format 2 is not specified, a specific occurrence of the REPLACE statement is in effect from the point at which it is specified until the next occurrence of a REPLACE statement or the end of the separately compiled program.

pseudo-text-1, pseudo-text-2

A sequence of text words that are bounded by, but not including, pseudo-text delimiters (==). Both characters of each pseudo-text delimiter must appear on one line.

Individual text words within pseudo-text can be up to 322 characters long. They can be continued subject to the normal continuation rules for source code format.

A text word must be delimited by separators. For more information, see Characters.

pseudo-text-1 can be one or more text words. It can consist solely of the separator comma or separator semicolon. pseudo-text-2 can be zero or more text words. It can consist solely of space characters, comment lines, or inline comments.

Each text word in pseudo-text-2 that is to be copied into the program is placed in the same area of the resultant program as the area in which it appears in pseudo-text-2.

Pseudo-text can consist of or include any words (except COPY), identifiers, or literals that can be written in the source text. This includes DBCS user-defined words, DBCS literals, and national literals.

DBCS user-defined words must be wholly formed; that is, there is no partial-word replacement for DBCS words.

Words or literals containing DBCS characters cannot be continued across lines.

partial-word-1, partial-word-2

A single text word that is bounded by, but not including, pseudo-text delimiters (==). Both characters of each pseudo-text delimiter must appear on one line. However, the text word within a partial-word can be continued.

The following rules apply to partial-word-1 and partial-word-2:

• partial-word-1 consists of one text word.
• partial-word-2 consists of zero or one text word.
• partial-word-1 and partial-word-2 cannot be an alphanumeric literal, national literal, DBCS literal, or DBCS word.

The compiler processes REPLACE statements in source text after the processing of any COPY statements. COPY must be processed first to assemble complete source text. Then, REPLACE can be used to modify that source text, performing simple string substitution. REPLACE statements cannot themselves contain COPY statements.

The text that is produced as a result of the processing of a REPLACE statement must not contain a REPLACE statement.