Procedures

A procedure-name is a user-defined name that identifies a section or a paragraph.

Section

A section-header optionally followed by one or more paragraphs.

Section-header

A section-name followed by the keyword SECTION, optionally followed by a priority-number, followed by a separator period.

Section-headers are optional after the keywords END DECLARATIVES or if there are no declaratives.

Section-name

A user-defined word that identifies a section. A referenced section-name, because it cannot be qualified, must be unique within the program in which it is defined.

Priority-number

An integer or a positive signed numeric literal ranging in value from 0 through 99. Priority-number identifies a fixed segment or an independent segment that is to contain the section.

Sections in the declaratives portion must contain priority numbers in the range of 0 through 49.

You cannot specify priority-numbers:

• In a method definition
• In a program that is declared with the RECURSIVE attribute
• In a program compiled with the THREAD compiler option

A section ends immediately before the next section header, or at the end of the PROCEDURE DIVISION, or, in the declaratives portion, at the keywords END DECLARATIVES.

Segments

A segment consists of all sections in a program that have the same priority-number. Priority-number determines whether a section is stored in a fixed segment or an independent segment at run time.

Segments with a priority-number of 0 through 49 are fixed segments. Segments with a priority-number of 50 through 99 are independent segments.

The type of segment (fixed or independent) controls the segmentation feature.

In fixed segments, procedures are always in last-used state. In independent segments, procedures are in initial state each time the segment receives control from a segment with a different priority-number, except when the transfer of control results from the execution of a GOBACK or EXIT PROGRAM statement. Restrictions on the use of ALTER, SORT, and MERGE statements in independent segments are described under those statements.

Enterprise COBOL does not support the overlay feature of the 85 COBOL Standard segmentation module.

Paragraph

A paragraph-name followed by a separator period, optionally followed by one or more sentences.

Paragraphs must be preceded by a period because paragraphs always follow either the IDENTIFICATION DIVISION header, a section, or another paragraph, all of which must end with a period.

Paragraph-name

A user-defined word that identifies a paragraph. A paragraph-name, because it can be qualified, need not be unique.

If there are no declaratives (format 2), a paragraph-name is not required in the PROCEDURE DIVISION.

A paragraph ends immediately before the next paragraph-name or section header, or at the end of the PROCEDURE DIVISION, or, in the declaratives portion, at the keywords END DECLARATIVES.

Paragraphs need not all be contained within sections, even if one or more paragraphs are so contained.

Sentence

One or more statements terminated by a separator period.

Statement

A syntactically valid combination of identifiers and symbols (literals, relational-operators, and so forth) beginning with a COBOL statement.

Identifier

The word or words necessary to make unique reference to a data item, optionally including qualification, subscripting, indexing, and reference-modification. In any PROCEDURE DIVISION reference (except the class test), the contents of an identifier must be compatible with the class specified through its PICTURE clause, otherwise results are unpredictable.

Execution begins with the first statement in the PROCEDURE DIVISION, excluding declaratives. Statements are executed in the order in which they are presented for compilation, unless the statement rules dictate some other order of execution.