Micro Focus Visual COBOL 3.0 for Eclipse (Windows) > General Reference > COBOL Language Reference > Part 2. Program Definition > Procedure Division > Statements

Statements

The ACCEPT Statement
The ACCEPT statement causes data keyed at the console or supplied by the operating system to be made available to the program in a specified data item.
The ADD Statement
The ADD statement causes two or more numeric operands to be summed and the result to be stored.
The ALLOCATE Statement
The ALLOCATE statement allocates dynamic storage.
The ALTER Statement
The ALTER statement modifies a predetermined sequence of operations.
The ATTACH Statement
Attaches a delegate, a method group or an anonymous method to an event.
The CALL Statement
The CALL statement causes control to be transferred to a specific program within the run unit.
The CANCEL Statement
The CANCEL statement ensures that the next time the referenced program is called it is in its initial state.
The CHAIN Statement
The CHAIN statement transfers control from one object program to another in the run unit with no subsequent return of control. The effect is as though the chained program is the main program in the new run unit.
The CLOSE Statement
The CLOSE statement terminates the processing of reels/units and files, with optional rewind, lock or removal where applicable.
The COMMIT Statement
The COMMIT statement releases all record locks in all files held by this run unit. For COBOL systems that support the WITH...ROLLBACK clause of the SELECT statement as other than documentary, COMMIT indicates the end of the current transaction and makes the effects of that transaction permanent.
The COMPUTE Statement
The COMPUTE statement assigns to one or more data items the value of an arithmetic expression.
The CONTINUE Statement
The CONTINUE statement is a no operation statement, indicating that no executable statement is present.
The CREATE Collection Statement
Creates or constructs an instance of a list or dictionary.
The DECLARE Statement
Declares one or more local variables within the procedure division body. The scope of any inline local variable is from the point of declaration until the end of the innermost containing block, where paragraphs, sections and the whole method are considered to be blocks.
The DELETE Statement
The DELETE statement logically removes a record from a mass storage file. It can be specified only for files with relative or indexed organization.
The DELETE FILE Statement
The DELETE FILE statement physically removes the specified files from the physical devices on which they reside.
The DETACH Statement
Detaches a delegate or a method group from an event.
The DISPLAY Statement
The DISPLAY statement causes data to be transferred from specified data items to the appropriate hardware device, such as the CRT screen.
The DIVIDE Statement
The DIVIDE statement divides one numeric data item into others and sets the values of data items equal to the quotient and remainder.
The ENTER Statement
The ENTER statement provides a means of allowing the use of more than one language in the same program.
The ENTRY Statement
The ENTRY statement establishes an alternate entry point into a called COBOL program.
The EVALUATE Statement
The EVALUATE statement describes a multi-branch, multi-join structure. It can cause multiple conditions to be evaluated. The subsequent action of the runtime element depends on the results of these evaluations.
The EXAMINE Statement
The EXAMINE statement replaces or counts the number of occurrences of a given character in a data item.
The EXEC(UTE) Statement
The EXEC(UTE) statement is provided as a linkage mechanism to allow control to be passed to non-COBOL subsystems.
The EXHIBIT Statement
The EXHIBIT statement causes an (optionally conditional) display of the literals, and/or identifiers (optionally preceded by the identifier name) specified in the statement.
The EXIT Statement
The EXIT statement provides a common end point for a series of procedures.
The FREE Statement
The FREE statement frees up dynamic storage that was previously allocated by an ALLOCATE statement.
The GOBACK Statement
The GOBACK statement marks the logical end of a called program.
The GO TO Statement
The GO TO statement causes control to be transferred from one part of the Procedure Division to another.
The IF Statement
The IF statement causes a condition to be evaluated (see the topic Conditional Expressions in the chapter Procedure Division). The subsequent action of the runtime element depends on whether the value of the condition is true or false.
The INITIALIZE Statement
The INITIALIZE statement provides the ability to set selected data items to specified values.
The INSPECT Statement
The INSPECT statement provides the ability to tally (Format 1), replace (Format 2), tally and replace (Format 3) , convert (Format 4) and tally trailing (Format 5).
The INVOKE Statement
The INVOKE statement causes a method to be invoked.
The JSON GENERATE Statement
The JSON GENERATE statement converts data to JSON format.
The MERGE Statement
The MERGE statement combines two or more identically sequenced files on a set of specified keys, and during the process makes records available, in merged order, to an output procedure or to an output file.
The MOVE Statement
The MOVE statement transfers data, in accordance with the rules of editing, to one or more data areas.
The MULTIPLY Statement
The MULTIPLY statement causes numeric data items to be multiplied and sets the values of data items equal to the results.
The NEXT SENTENCE Statement
The NEXT SENTENCE statement transfers control to the next COBOL sentence, that is, following the next period. It does not transfer control to the logically next COBOL verb as occurs with the CONTINUE verb.
The NOTE Statement
The NOTE statement introduces a sentence or paragraph that will be treated as comments.
The ON Statement
The ON statement allows selective execution of procedural statements on a periodic basis.
The OPEN Statement
The OPEN statement initiates the processing of files. It also performs checking and/or writing of labels and other input-output operations.
The PERFORM Statement
The PERFORM statement is used to transfer control explicitly to one or more procedures and to return control implicitly whenever execution of the specified procedure is complete.
The RAISE Statement
The RAISE statement raises an exception.
The READ Statement
The RELEASE Statement
The RELEASE statement transfers records to the initial phase of a SORT operation.
The RESET Collection Statement
Deletes all the elements from the list or dictionary.
The RETURN Statement
The RETURN statement obtains either sorted records from the final phase of a SORT operation or merged records during a MERGE operation.
The REWRITE Statement
The REWRITE statement logically replaces a record existing in a disk file.
The ROLLBACK Statement
The ROLLBACK statement releases all record locks in all files held by this run unit.
The SEARCH Statement
The SEARCH statement is used to search a table for a table element that satisfies the specified condition and to adjust the associated index-name to indicate that table element.
The SERVICE Statement
The SERVICE statement is used to establish addressability to Linkage Section items.
The SET Statement
The SET statement is used to alter the status of external switches.
The SORT Statement
The SORT statement creates a sort file by executing input procedures or by transferring records from another file, sorts the records in the sort file on a set of specified keys, and in the final phase of the sort operation, makes available each record from the sort file, in sorted order to some output procedures or to an output file.
The START Statement
The START statement provides a basis for logical positioning within a relative or indexed file for subsequent retrieval of records. This statement is not available for files with sequential organization.
The STOP Statement
The STOP statement causes a permanent or temporary suspension of the execution of the run unit.
The STRING Statement
The STRING statement provides concatenation of the partial or complete contents of two or more data items into a single data item.
The SUBTRACT Statement
The SUBTRACT statement is used to subtract one, or the sum of two or more, numeric data items from one or more items, and set the values of one or more items equal to the results.
The SYNC Statement
The SYNC statement marks a statement block as a critical section by obtaining the mutual-exclusion lock for a given object, executing a block of statements, and then releasing the lock.
The TRANSFORM Statement
The TRANSFORM statement is used to alter characters according to a transformation rule.
The TRY Statement
The TRY...CATCH...FINALLY...END-TRY structure is the basis for structured exception handling. The TRY block allows you to test a section of code for exceptions that may occur during its execution. The CATCH block must specify the type of exception you wish to handle if one should occur during the execution of the TRY block. The FINALLY block allows you to execute a section of code following the TRY block, whether or not an exception occurred.
The UNLOCK Statement
The UNLOCK statement releases all record locks held by the run unit on a named file.
The UNSTRING Statement
The UNSTRING statement causes contiguous data in a sending field to be separated and placed into multiple receiving fields.
The USE Statement
The USE statement specifies procedures for input-output error handling, that are in addition to the standard procedures provided by the input-output control system.
The WAIT Statement
The WAIT statement suspends the current thread's execution until the targeted thread's execution terminates and optionally retrieves the value returned from the targeted thread's execution.
The WRITE Statement
The WRITE statement releases a logical record for an output or input-output file. For sequential files it can also be used for vertical positioning of lines within a logical page.
The XML GENERATE Statement
The XML GENERATE statement converts data to XML format.
The XML PARSE Statement
The XML PARSE statement is used to interface with an XML parser that is part of the COBOL run-time system. The XML PARSE statement parses an XML document into its individual pieces and passes each piece, one at a time, to a user-written processing procedure.

Parent topic: Procedure Division