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 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 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 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 JSON PARSE Statement The JSON PARSE statement converts JSON text to COBOL data formats. It matches the JSON name/value pairs to COBOL identifiers,
and then populates them.
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 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 usually in a CICS program.
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 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.