COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) is a programming language that is primarily used in business and administrative systems. It's known for its readability and usage in handling large volumes of data. Although it might be difficult to cover all aspects of COBOL in a single response, I can provide you with a brief introduction and an example code snippet to help you get started.
COBOL programs are composed of a series of paragraphs that contain statements. Each statement starts with a verb and ends with a period. Here's a simple example of a COBOL program that calculates the sum of two numbers: https://www.theengineer.info/2023/05/development-programming-languages.html
cobolIDENTIFICATION DIVISION. PROGRAM-ID. ADDITION. DATA DIVISION. WORKING-STORAGE SECTION. 01 NUM1 PIC 9(5). 01 NUM2 PIC 9(5). 01 SUM PIC 9(6). PROCEDURE DIVISION. DISPLAY "Enter the first number: ". ACCEPT NUM1. DISPLAY "Enter the second number: ". ACCEPT NUM2. COMPUTE SUM = NUM1 + NUM2. DISPLAY "The sum is: " SUM. STOP RUN.
Let's break down this code:
- The
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION
specifies the name of the program. - The
DATA DIVISION
defines the data used in the program. In this example, we have three data items:NUM1
,NUM2
, andSUM
. They are defined with their respective picture clauses, which determine their data types and sizes. - The
PROCEDURE DIVISION
contains the main logic of the program. It starts with displaying a message and accepting user input forNUM1
andNUM2
. - The
COMPUTE
statement calculates the sum ofNUM1
andNUM2
and stores the result inSUM
. - Finally, the program displays the result and stops execution with the
STOP RUN
statement.
This is just a basic example, but it should give you an idea of the structure and syntax of a COBOL program. COBOL is known for its extensive support for handling files and working with large data sets, so you'll find many features and capabilities beyond what's covered here.
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