A comment line is any line with an asterisk (*) in the continuation indicator area of the line. A comment line can appear as any line in a source element after the IDENTIFICATION DIVISION header. Any combination of characters from the computer's character set can be included in area A and area B of that line (see the diagram in the topic Reference Format Representation). The asterisk and the characters in area A and area B will be produced on the listing but serve as documentation only.
A comment line can appear before the Identification Division header.
A second form of comment line represented as above but with a slash (/) (instead of an asterisk) in the indicator area of the line causes page ejection prior to printing the comment.
Successive comment lines are allowed. Continuation of comment lines is permitted, except that each continuation line must contain an asterisk in the indicator area.