Language elements of the ENVIRONMENT DIVISION

In the case of structure-oriented processing, the ASSIGN clause defines whether the XML document is made available in memory or in a physical file. If the document is contained in a physical file, its BS2000/OSD access method is irrelevant. However, the file’s record structure is transparent for the program in the form of end-of-line characters. But these characters can also be hidden using options (see the "COBOL2000 User Guide" [1] for details).