COBOL Manual for TNS and TNS/R Programs

Source Program Organization and Format
HP COBOL Manual for TNS and TNS/R Programs—522555-006
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Area A and Area B
If all characters between margin A and margin R are spaces, then the line is a blank
line. Blank lines can occur anywhere in the source text and have no effect on either the
syntax or semantics of source programs. If at least one character other than spaces
occurs after margin A, that character begins a new lexical element. When a program
text line is not continued (that is, when its successor text line does not contain a
hyphen in its indicator area), the compiler assumes that a space follows the last
nonblank character of the first line. If the final character is a period, comma, or
semicolon, the assumed space completes the separator begun by that character;
otherwise, the assumed space itself acts as a space separator.
Area A and Area B
HP COBOL ignores the distinction between area A and area B. The lexical elements of
a source program can occur anywhere between margin A and margin R. The few
exceptions to this are described in Restrictions.
Restrictions
You can format the text of a source program line freely except as noted in these topics:
•
Reserved Words
•
Period Separators
•
Embedded SQL/MP or SQL/MX Statements
•
Comment-Entry
•
Standard COBOL Practice
Reserved Words
Do not split these reserved words across program lines:
•
COPY
For other restrictions on the format of the COPY statement body, see COPY
Statement.
•
DATE-COMPILED
If you split the reserved word DATE-COMPILED across program lines, the compiler
handles the paragraph as a simple comment-entry and does not replace its
contents with the date and time of compilation.
•
REPLACE