CHAPTER 3 ----- Organization of the Paper

Section 2 of this paper is devoted to the development of twenty rules which can be used to "modernize" a COBOL program. These rules are divided into five categories: some rules about formatting practices which are global in nature, and rules which are specific to each of the four COBOL DIVISIONS - the IDENTIFICATION, ENVIRONMENT, DATA, and PROCEDURE DIVISIONs. A chapter is devoted to each of these categories.

Section 3 is a textbook review of several current COBOL programming texts. After some introductory remarks, the rules developed in section 2 are examined in sequence, using the same five categories mentioned above.

In section 4, these same rules are traced through a number of current COBOL programs being written or modified at the authors place of employment. Also, the effect of modifying several of these programs to conform to the twenty rules is investigated.

Finally, in section 5, some conclusions are drawn and some recommendations made. Also, some areas for further investigation are noted.

There are two appendices. One is a synopsis of the twenty rules. The other is a summary chart of the results of the program analysis from section 4.