Definitions

Alphabet-Name

A User-defined word, in the SPECIAL-NAMES Paragraph of the Environment Division, that assigns a name to a Collating Sequence.

Alphabetic Character

A Letter or a space Character.

Alphanumeric Character

Any Character in the computer character set.

Character

The basic indivisible unit of the language.

Character Position

A character position is the amount of physical storage required to store a single standard data format character whose usage is DISPLAY. Further characteristics of the physical storage are defined by the implementor.

Character-String

A sequence of contiguous Characters which form a COBOL Word, a Literal, a PICTURE character-string, or a Comment-Entry.

COBOL Word

A Character-String which forms a User-defined word, a System name, or a Reserved Word.

Collating Sequence

The sequence in which the characters that are acceptable to a computer are ordered for purposes of sorting, merging, comparing, and for processing indexed files sequentially.

Comment-Entry

An entry in the Identification Division that may be any combination of Characters from the computer character set.

Data Item

A unit of data (excluding Literals) defined by the COBOL program.

Figurative Constant

Any of the following literals:

Literal	Meaning
ALL	Represents all or part of the string generated by successive concatenations of the characters comprising the literal. It must be a Nonnumeric Literal.
HIGH-VALUE, HIGH-VALUES	Represents one or more characters with the highest ordinal position in the program collating sequence. Usually this is the hexadecimal value "FF".
LOW-VALUE, LOW-VALUES	Represents one or more characters with the lowest ordinal position in the program collating sequence. Usually this is the binary value 0.
NULL, NULLS	When -ca compiler option is used, NULL represents the numeric value "zero" or one or more occurrences of a character whose underlying representation is binary zero. Otherwise NULL represents an invalid object reference.
QUOTE, QUOTES	Represents one or more quotation mark characters. These words may not be used in place of quotation marks for delimiting a Nonnumeric Literal.
SPACE, SPACES	Represents one or more space characters.
ZERO, ZEROS, ZEROES	Represents the numeric value "zero" or one or more occurrences of the character 0, depending on whether the constant is treated as a numeric or nonnumeric literal.

Identifier

An identifier is a term used to reflect a data-name that, if not unique in a program, must be followed by a syntactically correct combination of qualifiers, subscripts, or reference modifiers necessary for uniqueness of reference.

Integer

A Numeric Literal or a numeric data item that does not include any digit position to the right of the assumed decimal point. When the term 'integer' appears in general formats, integer must not be a numeric data item, and must not be signed, nor zero unless explicitly allowed by the rules of that format.

Letter

A Character belonging to one of the following sets:

1.	Uppercase letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z;

2.	Lowercase letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, 1, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z

3.	Accented letters: è, é, à, ù, ò, ì.

4.	Other alphabets, according with the current encoding.

Literal

A Character-String whose value is implied by the ordered set of characters comprising the string.

Nonnumeric Literal

•	A Literal bounded by quotation marks. The string of characters may include any Character in the computer's character set.

•	The hexadecimal value of one or more characters using the native character set. Any of the following formats are recognized:

o	X"hex-values"

o	X'hex-values'

o	H"hex-values"

o	H'hex-values'

o	N"national-digits"

o	N’national-digits’

o	NX"national-hex-digits"

o	NX’national-hex-digits’

 

NOTE - National digits are managed as UTF-16BE characters.

•	The name of a resource property specified by any of the following syntaxes:

o	R"property_name"

o	R'property_name'

Numeric Character

A Character that belongs to the following set of digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Numeric Data Item

A Data Item whose description restricts its content to a value represented by characters chosen from the digits '0' through '9'; if signed, the item may also contain a '+', '-', or other representation of an operational sign. (See the SIGN clause.)

Numeric Literal

A Literal composed of one or more Numeric Characters that may contain either a decimal point, or an algebraic sign, or both. The decimal point must not be the rightmost character. The algebraic sign, if present, must be the leftmost character.

Numeric literals may also be specified using binary, octal, or hexadecimal notation. To specify a numeric literal in one of these forms, preface the number with one of the following prefixes:

Prefix	Notation	Usage Example (representation of zero)
B#	Binary	B#110000
O#	Octal	O#60
X#	Hexadecimal	X#30
H#	Hexadecimal	H#30

Reserved Word

A COBOL Word specified in the list of words which may be used in a COBOL source program, but which must not appear in the program as a User-defined word or System name.

System name

A COBOL Word that is used to communicate with the operating environment.

User-defined word

A user-defined word is a COBOL Word that must be supplied by the user to satisfy the format of a clause or statement. Each Character of a user-defined word is selected from Literal, Numeric Literal, '_' and '-', except that '_' and '-' may not appear as the first character.