COBOL words

A word consists of 1-30 characters from the following set:

A-Z, a-z, 0-9, - (hyphen)

No distinction is made between uppercase and lowercase letters.

A word may neither begin nor end with a hyphen, must not contain space characters, and must contain at least one letter.

Words are divided into four categories:

• user-defined words

• system-names

• reserved words

• function-names

1. User-defined words

A user-defined word is a COBOL word to be supplied by the programmer according to the format for a clause or statement. It refers to particular units of data at object time. The following subsections describe the types of user-defined words employed in COBOL programs, and state the rules for writing these names.

The 17 types of user-defined words are listed and defined in table 4.

All user-defined words except segment-numbers and level-numbers must be made unique. Either there must be no other user-defined word in the compilation unit with the same sequence of characters and punctuation marks, or the word must be qualified.

With the exception of paragraph-name, section-name, level-number, and segment-number, all user-defined words must contain at least one alphabetic character. Segment-numbers or level-numbers may be identical to other segment-numbers or level-numbers, or to paragraph-names and section-names.

alphabet-name	An alphabetical name located in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph of the Environment Division and connected with a character set and/or collating sequence.
class-name (object-oriented)	A user-defined word that identifies a class.
class-name	A name entered by the user in the CLASS clause of the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph in the Environment Division to define a character set. This classname can be referenced in the class condition.
condition-name	The name assigned to a specific value, set of values, or range of values which an elementary data item may assume (hence, a condition of the data item). A condition-name is defined by an 88-level entry in the FILE SECTION, LINKAGE SECTION , WORKING-STORAGE SECTION or LOCAL-STORAGE SECTION.
data-name	A name identifying a data item in the Data Division. A data-name is defined by its appearance in a data description entry.
file-name	A name assigned to a set of input data or output data. A file-name is defined by its appearance in the SELECT clause of the FILE CONTROL paragraph and its use as the name of an FD entry. A special file-name is a sort-file-name that names a sort-file. A sort-file-name is defined by its appearance in the SELECT clause of the FILE CONTROL paragraph and its use to name an SD entry in the FILE SECTION.
index-name	A name of an index for a particular table. An index name is declared by its occurrence in the INDEXED BY phrase of the OCCURS clause.
interface-name	A user-defined word that identifies an interface.
level-number	A level-number indicates the position of a data item in the hierarchical structure of a record or indicates special properties of a data description entry. Level-numbers are defined by their appearance in a data description entry.
library-name	A name of an entry in the COBOL compilation unit library, which may contain more than one text with various names.
method-name	A user-defined word that identifies a method. The method name is defined by its use in the METHOD-ID paragraph of the Identification Division.
mnemonic-name	A fixed name, provided the programmer associated it with a particular implementor-name in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph of the Environment Division.
paragraph-name	A paragraph-name is used to name a paragraph in the Procedure Division. Paragraph-names are written starting at Area A.
parameter-name	A parameter-name identifies a formal parameter of a parameterized class or of a parameterized interface.
program-name	The name used to identify the program. The program-name is defined by its use in the PROGRAM-ID paragraph of the Identification Division. It may also appear in a CALL statement of a corresponding calling program.
program-proto-type-name	A user-defined word that identifies a program prototype.
record-name	The name of a record. A record is declared by a 01-level entry in the FILE SECTION, LINKAGE SECTION, WORKING-STORAGE SECTION, LOCAL-STORAGE SECTION or in the SUB-SCHEMA SECTION.
report-name	The name of a report. A report-name is defined by its occurrence in the REPORT clause of an FD entry; it is used to name an RD entry in the REPORT SECTION.
section-name	A section-name is used to name a section in the Procedure Division. A section-name is written starting at Area A and is followed by the word SECTION.
segment-number	A number to classify sections in the Procedure Division for purposes of segmentation. It is defined by its use in a section header.
symbolic-character	A name for a figurative constant defined by the user character in the SYMBOLIC-CHARACTERS clause of the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph.
text-name	Name of an entry in the COBOL compilation unit library. The entry is copied from the library by the COPY statement.
type-name	A user-defined name to identify a type which is described in a data description entry of the DATA DIVISION.

Table 4: COBOL user-defined words

2. System-names

A system-name is a COBOL word which is used as an interface with the operating system environment. System-names are defined by the implementor and may vary from compiler to compiler. From the programmer’s point of view, the system-names of a specific compiler are treated as reserved words.

The system names for COBOL2000 are:

Computer-name	in the SOURCE-COMPUTER and OBJECT-COMPUTER paragraphs.
Implementor-name	in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph and the ASSIGN clause.
Call-convention	in the CALL-CONVENTION directive.

3. Reserved words

COBOL includes a fixed number of reserved words, the COBOL words.

A reserved word serves a specific purpose and must be used only in the context specified in the formats; it must not occur in the compilation unit as a user-defined word or system-name.

A complete list of reserved words is supplied on the pages below. All reserved words marked with an asterisk (*) in this list are treated as reserved words only if DML (Data Manipulation Language) statements are being used for compilation; otherwise they may be employed as user-defined words. Compilation with DML statements occurs when

SUB-SCHEMA SECTION

is specified in the Data Division of a program (see the "UDS/SQL Reference Manual" [6]).

There are three types of reserved words:

• Required words

• Optional words

• Special purpose words

• Required words

  A required word is a word whose presence is required when the format in which the word appears is used in a compilation unit.

  Required words are of two types:

  Keywords

  Within each format, such words are uppercase and underlined. Keywords are only allowed in the formats indicated. Keywords may be grouped as shown below:

  • Verbs such as ADD, READ and CALL.

  • Required words which are encountered in statement and entry formats.

  • Words which have a specific functional significance, such as NEGATIVE, SECTION, etc.

  Some keywords may be abbreviated (e.g. PIC for PICTURE).

  Special character words

  These are the arithmetic operators and relation characters (see section "Glossary").

• Optional words

  Within each format, uppercase words which are not underscored are called "optional words". These words may be used at the option of the user. The presence or omission of an optional word has no effect on the meaning of the COBOL statement. However, an optional word must not be misspelled or replaced with another word.

• Special purpose words

  There are two types of special purpose words:

  • special registers

  • figurative constants

  Special registers

  Special registers are data items in which information produced with the use of certain COBOL features is stored. The attributes of these registers are predefined, and each register has a fixed name. Thus, the programmer does not have to define these registers in the Data Division. The eleven special registers are listed in table 5.

Register name	Description	Use
TALLY	5-digit unsigned data item with COMPUTATIONAL phrase (see section "USAGE clause")	TALLY may be used wherever a data item with an integral value can occur. For example, if the current value of TALLY is 3, the following statements are equivalent: ADD 3 TO ALPHA. ADD TALLY TO ALPHA.
LINE-COUNTER PAGE-COUNTER PRINT-SWITCH CBL-CTR	Used by the Report Writer (see chapter "Report Writer").	See section "Special registers of the Report Writer".
LINAGE-COUNTER	A 4-byte data item containing an unsigned integer whose value is less than or equal to integer-1 or the data item referenced by dataname-1 in the LINAGE clause	A LINAGE-COUNTER register is generated by the compiler for each file whose file description entry contains a LINAGE-clause (see section "LINAGE clause").
RETURN-CODE	8-digit signed data item with COMPUTATIONAL and SYNCHRONIZED phrase (corresponds to PIC S9(8) COMP-5 SYNC).	This data item exists only once for each run unit. The user can use this item to exchange information between COBOL modules which were compiled separately but linked into a single object program. This item can also be used to store the return value of a non-COBOL subprogram. When a COBOL subprogram terminates, the contents of the item can be made available to the calling non-COBOL program as a function value. If the contents of the RETURN-CODE special register are not 0 after the execution of STOP RUN, the operating system is informed that the program terminated abnormally.
SORT-RETURN SORT-FILE-SIZE SORT-CORE-SIZE SORT-MODE-SIZE SORT-EOW SORT-CCSN	Used by the sort section (see section "Sorting records".	See section "Special registers for files: SORT".
XML-EVENT XML-CODE XML-TEXT XML-NTEXT XML-NAMESPACE XML-NNAMESPACE XML-NAMESPACE-PREFIX XML-NNAMESPACE-PREFIX	Used by the XML part (see section "Language elements for processing XML").	See section "Special registers for the XML PARSE statement".

Table 5: COBOL special registers

Reserved words

The following table contains all the reserved words. All words marked with * are treated as reserved words only if DML (Data Manipulation Language) statements are being used for compilation; otherwise they may be employed as user-defined words. Compilation with DML statements occurs when SUB-SCHEMA SECTION is specified.

A ’#’ before the word means that this word is not treated as a reserved word if ENABLE-KEYWORDS = *COBOL85 is set in the SOURCE-PROPERTIES option.

< <= + * ** - / > >= : = ACCEPT ACCESS #ACTIVE-CLASS ADD #ADDRESS ADVANCING AFTER ALL #ALLOCATE ALPHABET ALPHABETIC ALPHABETIC-LOWER ALPHABETIC-UPPER ALPHANUMERIC ALPHANUMERIC-EDITED ALSO ALTER ALTERNATE AND ANY #ANYCASE ARE AREA AREAS #AS ASCENDING ASSIGN AT AUTHOR	#B-AND #B-NOT #B-OR #B-XOR #BASED BEFORE BEGINNING BINARY #BINARY-CHAR #BINARY-DOUBLE #BINARY-LONG #BINARY-SHORT #BIT BLANK BLOCK #BOOLEAN BOTTOM BY BYTE-LENGTH CALL CANCEL *CASE CBL-CTR CF CH CHARACTER CHARACTERS CHECKING CLASS #CLASS-ID CLOCK-UNITS CLOSE CODE CODE-SET #COL COLLATING #COLS COLUMN #COLUMNS COMMA COMMIT COMMON	COMMUNICATION COMP COMP-1 COMP-2 COMP-3 COMP-5 COMPUTATIONAL COMPUTATIONAL-1 COMPUTATIONAL-2 COMPUTATIONAL-3 COMPUTATIONAL-5 COMPUTE #CONDITION CONFIGURATION *CONNECT #CONSTANT CONTAINS CONTENT CONTINUE CONTROL CONTROLS CONVERTING COPY CORR CORRESPONDING COUNT CREATING #CRT CURRENCY *CURRENT #CURSOR DATA #DATA-POINTER *DATABASE-EXCEPTION DATABASE-KEY DATABASE-KEY-LONG DATE DATE-COMPILED DATE-WRITTEN DAY DAY-OF-WEEK *DB	DE DEBUG-CONTENTS DEBUG-ITEM DEBUG-LINE DEBUG-NAME DEBUG-SUB-1 DEBUG-SUB-2 DEBUG-SUB-3 DEBUGGING DECIMAL-POINT DECLARATIVES #DEFAULT DELETE DELIMITED DELIMITER DEPENDING DESCENDING DETAIL DISABLE DISC *DISCONNECT DISPLAY DIVIDE DIVISION #DOCUMENT DOWN *DUPLICATE DUPLICATES DYNAMIC EBCDIC #EC ELSE *EMPTY ENABLE END END-ACCEPT END-ADD END-CALL END-COMPUTE END-DELETE END-DISPLAY END-DIVIDE
END-EVALUATE END-IF #END-INVOKE END-MULTIPLY END-OF-PAGE #END-OPEN END-PERFORM END-READ END-RECEIVE END-RETURN END-REWRITE END-SEARCH END-START END-STRING END-SUBTRACT END-UNSTRING END-WRITE #END-XML ENDING ENTRY ENVIRONMENT #EO EOP EQUAL ERASE ERROR *ESCAPE EVALUATE EVERY EXCEPTION #EXCEPTION-OBJECT *EXCLUSIVE EXIT EXTEND EXTENDED EXTERNAL #FACTORY FALSE FD *FETCH FILE FILE-CONTROL FILLER FINAL *FIND *FINISH	FIRST #FLOAT-EXTENDED #FLOAT-LONG #FLOAT-SHORT FOOTING FOR #FORMAT FREE FROM FUNCTION #FUNCTION-ID GENERATE GET GIVING GLOBAL GO GOBACK GREATER GROUP #GROUP-USAGE HEADING HIGH-VALUE HIGH-VALUES I-O I-O-CONTROL ID IDENTIFICATION #IDENTIFIED IF IGNORING IN *INCLUDING INDEX INDEXED INDICATE #INHERITS INITIAL INITIALIZE INITIATE INPUT INPUT-OUTPUT INSPECT INSTALLATION #INTERFACE	#INTERFACE-ID INTO INVALID #INVOKE IS JUST JUSTIFIED *KEEP KEY LABEL LAST LEADING LEFT LENGTH LESS LIMIT *LIMITED LIMITS LINAGE LINE LINE-COUNTER LINES LINKAGE #LOCAL-STORAGE #LOCALE LOCK LOW-VALUE LOW-VALUES *MASK *MATCHING *MEMBER *MEMBERS *MEMBERSHIP MEMORY MERGE MESSAGE #METHOD #METHOD-ID #MINUS MODE *MODIFY MODULES MORE-LABELS	MOVE MULTIPLE MULTIPLY #NATIONAL #NATIONAL-EDITED NATIVE NEGATIVE #NESTED NEXT NO NOT #NULL NUMBER NUMERIC NUMERIC-EDITED #OBJECT OBJECT-COMPUTER #OBJECT-REFERENCE *OCCURENCE OCCURS OF OFF OMITTED ON OPEN OPTIONAL #OPTIONS OR ORDER ORGANIZATION OTHER OUTPUT OVERFLOW #OVERRIDE *OWNER PACKED-DECIMAL PADDING PAGE PAGE-COUNTER PERFORM *PERMANENT PF PH PIC
PICTURE PLUS POINTER POSITION POSITIVE #PRESENT PRINT-SWITCH PRINTING *PRIOR PROCEDURE PROCEED PROGRAM PROGRAM-ID #PROGRAM-POINTER #PROPERTY *PROTECTED #PROTOTYPE PURGE QUOTE QUOTES #RAISE #RAISING RANDOM RD READ *READY *REALM *REALM-NAME RECEIVE RECORD RECORDING RECORDS REDEFINES REEL REFERENCE RELATIVE RELEASE REMAINDER REMOVAL RENAMES REPEATED REPLACE REPLACING REPORT REPORTING	REPORTS #REPOSITORY RERUN RESERVE RESET *RESULT #RESUME *RETAINING *RETRIEVAL #RETRY RETURN #RETURNING REVERSED REWIND REWRITE RF RH RIGHT ROLLBACK ROUNDED RUN SAME #SCREEN SD SEARCH SECTION SECURITY SEGMENT-LIMIT SELECT *SELECTIVE #SELF SEND SENTENCE SEPARATE SEQUENCE SEQUENTIAL SET *SET-SELECTION *SETS #SHARING SIGN SIZE SORT SORT-MERGE SORT-TAPE SORT-TAPES	*SORTED SOURCE SOURCE-COMPUTER #SOURCES SPACE SPACES SPECIAL-NAMES STANDARD STANDARD-1 STANDARD-2 START STATUS STOP *STORE STRING *SUB-SCHEMA SUBTRACT SUM #SUPER SUPPRESS *SUPPRESSING SYMBOLIC SYNC SYNCHRONIZED *SYSTEM #SYSTEM-DEFAULT TABLE TALLY TALLYNG TAPE TAPES *TENANT TERMINAL TERMINATE TEST THAN THEN THROUGH THRU TIME TIMES TO TOP TRAILING TRUE TRY	TYPE #TYPEDEF UNIT UNITS #UNIVERSAL #UNLOCK UNSTRING UNTIL UP *UPDATE UPON USAGE *USAGE-MODE USE #USER-DEFAULT USING #VAL-STATUS #VALID #VALIDATE #VALIDATE-STATUS VALUE VALUES VARYING #VERSION-XML *VIA WHEN WITH *WITHIN WORDS WORKING-STORAGE WRITE #XML ZERO ZEROES ZEROS

Reserved words for compiler directives

ALL AND AS B-AND B-NOT B-OR B-XOR BYTE-LENGTH CALL-CONVENTION CHECKING COBOL DE-EDITING DEFINE DEFINED DIVIDE ELSE END-IF END-EVALUATE EQUAL EVALUATE FIXED FLAG-85 FLAG-NATIVE-ARITHMETIC FORMAT FREE FUNCTION-ARGUMENT GREATER IF IMP IS

LEAP-SECOND LESS LISTING LOCATION MOVE NOT NUMVAL OFF ON OR OTHER OVERRIDE PAGE PARAMETER PROPAGATE SET SIZE SOURCE THAN THROUGH THRU TO TRUE TURN WHEN ZERO-LENGTH

In addition, all the exception condition names from table 45 in section "Exception conditions and exception statuses" are reserved words for compiler directives.

 

Context-sensitive words

ALIGNED ARITHMETIC ATTRIBUTE AUTO AUTOMATIC BACKGROUND-COLOR BELL BLINK CENTER CHECK CLASSIFICATION CYCLE DISCARD DTD ELEMENT ENTRY-CONVENTION EOL EOS EXPANDS FOREGROUND-COLOR FOREVER FULL HIGHLIGHT IMPLEMENTS INITIALIZED INTRINSIC LINAGE-COUNTER LOCALIZE LOWLIGHT MANUAL NAMESPACE NONE NORMAL NUMBERS

ONLY PARAGRAPH PARSE PREVIOUS PROCESSING RAW RECURSIVE RELATION REQUIRED RETURN-CODE REVERSE-VIDEO SCHEMA SECONDS SECURE SIGNED SORT-CCSN SORT-CORE-SIZE SORT-EOW SORT-FILE-SIZE SORT-MODE-SIZE SORT-RETURN STACK STATEMENT STEP STRONG SYMBOL UCS-2 UCS-4 UNDERLINE UNSIGNED UTF-16 UTF-8 VALIDITY YYYYDDD YYYYMMDD

4. Function-names

A function-name is a word that is one of a specified list of words which may be used in a COBOL program. The same word, in a different context, may appear in a program as a user-defined word (see section "General").

5. Exception-situation-names

An exception-situation-name is a COBOL word which identifies an exception condition (see table 45 in section "Exception conditions and exception statuses" ).

In other contexts these words can be used as user-defined names.