The DELETE statement (under the BASIS mechanism) identifies lines of the COBOL source file to be ignored by your COBOL system. Any COBOL statements that follow the DELETE statement (up to the next BASIS mechanism INSERT or DELETE statement in the edit control file) are included.
General Format
Syntax Rules
- The DELETE reserved word can commence anywhere between columns 1 and 66 of the statement line.
- Sequence numbers can be included anywhere in columns 1 through 6 of the statement and must be followed by a space.
- Subject-sequence-1, subject-sequence-2, and so on, must be 6-digit positive integers (following the rules for integer numeric-literals).
- Subject-sequence-range-1, subject-sequence-range-2, and so on, must consist of two subject-sequence numbers (as above) separated by a hyphen (-).
- The comma between subject-sequences and/or subject-sequence ranges is mandatory.
General Rules
- Subject-sequence-1, subject-sequence-2, and so on, refer to sequence numbers of those statements within the COBOL source file which are to be ignored by your COBOL system.
- Subject-sequence-range-1, subject-sequence-range-2, and so on, refer to inclusive ranges of statement sequence numbers within the COBOL source file, all of which statements are to be ignored when the intermediate code is produced.
- Any COBOL statements following the DELETE statement in the edit control file up to the next BASIS mechanism DELETE or INSERT statement are included in the source submitted to your COBOL system. These COBOL source statements are inserted in place of the last statement omitted by this BASIS mechanism DELETE statement.
