COBOL Manual for TNS/E Programs (H06.03+)

Language Elements

HP COBOL Manual for TNS/E Programs—520347-003

3-6

Numeric Literals and PICTURE Character-Strings

Several punctuation characters (comma, period, left parenthesis, right parenthesis) are

also defined as characters available for the formation of numeric literals and PICTURE

character-strings. They are not separators in these contexts but instead represent a

part of that language element; however, an exception exists if the apparent last

character of such a character-string is a period or comma immediately followed by a

space. In this case, the period or comma is always interpreted as part of the separator

following the character-string, and not as the last character of the numeric literal or

PICTURE character-string.

Character-Strings

A character-string consists of one or more characters that form:

•

COBOL Words

•

Literals

•

PICTURE Character-Strings

•

Comments

Most character-strings are limited to certain characters, but nonnumeric literals (except

for hexadecimal literals beginning with X ) and comments can contain any characters.

Character-strings and separators form the text of COBOL source programs.

COBOL Words

char-1

char-n

If the COBOL word is a level-number or segment-number, then char-1 is a digit.

If the COBOL word is a section-name or paragraph-name, then these rules apply:

•

char-1 is a letter (uppercase or lowercase) or a digit.

•

char-n is a letter (uppercase or lowercase), a digit, or a hyphen (-).

•

The last character cannot be a hyphen.

•

The maximum length of the word is 30 characters.

char-1

char-n

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