NOTE Statement

IBM DOS/VS COBOL accepts a NOTE statement in the PROCEDURE division:

NOTE  character string(s)

The entire statement is treated as a comment.

If the NOTE statement is not first statement in its paragraph, then it ends when the first of these instances occurs.

• the first period followed by a space
• the beginning of the next paragraph
• the end of the source code.

If the NOTE statement is the first statement in a paragraph, then it ends when the first of these instances occurs.

• The beginning of the next paragraph
• The end of the source code.

All subsequent statements in the same paragraph are also ignored.

In IBM DOS/VS COBOL compatibility mode, ACUCOBOL-GT accepts the NOTE statement as IBM DOS/VS COBOL does, with one slight difference. When a NOTE statement is the first statement in a paragraph, IBM DOS/VS COBOL parses subsequent statements in the same paragraph, and presumably flags any syntax errors found in them. ACUCOBOL-GT, however, does not perform any syntax parsing in such cases.