COBOL Manual for TNS/E Programs (H06.08+, J06.03+)

Table 11 Special Characters (continued)
Name of CharacterCharacter
Greater than sign>
Less than sign<
Except in nonnumeric literals, the compiler handles lowercase letters as equivalent to the
corresponding uppercase letters.
You can use characters that are not in the COBOL character set in your COBOL source programs
in these cases:
• A character other than the dollar sign ($) can represent the currency symbol in PICTURE clauses
(see SPECIAL-NAMES Paragraph)
• A question mark (?) precedes a compiler directive (see Indicator Area (page 44))
• Comment-entries, comment lines, and nonnumeric literals can contain any characters in the
computer’s character set (but some control characters adversely affect the compiler listing)
Punctuation Characters
Punctuation characters belong to the COBOL character set and are listed in Table 10. In a COBOL
source program, you can use a punctuation character in these contexts:
• Separators
• Comments
• Nonnumeric and National Literals
• Numeric Literals and PICTURE Character-Strings
Separators
A separator is one or more consecutive punctuation characters used to separate character-strings,
sentences, or special clauses or to delimit other characters in expressions. The punctuation characters
that can be used as separators are:
• Space
• Comma or Semicolon
• Colon
• Period
• Quotation Marks
• Parentheses
• Equal Sign
Every character-string must be followed by a sequence of one or more separators. The syntactic
definition of the COBOL language specifies when a sequence can or must contain any of the
period, parentheses, colon, or pseudo-text separators. A space separator can always immediately
precede or follow any other separator, except where the reference format rules specify otherwise
(see Reference Format for Source Program Lines (page 44)).
NOTE: The rules for using the punctuation characters as separators do not apply within comments,
nonnumeric literals, numeric literals, or PICTURE character-strings)
Space
A space character is a separator. Anywhere that a space is used as a separator or a part of a
separator, more than one space can be used. The compiler handles all spaces immediately following
Punctuation Characters 61