The subject of structured programming has been discussed at
length in many textbooks. Therefore, this paper will not deal
with the topic of structured programming except as it relates
to some logic structures in the PROCEDURE DIVISION. Most current
textbooks assume structured programming as an integral part of
teaching COBOL, and most programmers have adopted these concepts.
Also, this paper will not deal with the concepts of choosing
data and paragraph names and indentation and program layout except
as it relates to some of the ideas on programming practices in
the past. This topic is also generally well covered in current
texts.
Finally, this paper will not try to be all-encompassing to
all current variations of COBOL, but will generally deal with
COBOL as it is implemented on IBM mainframes using the MVS operating
system as this is the environment that the author is most familiar
with. However, most of these comments are applicable to any environment.
It is expected that some of these rules, especially those
dealing with logic structure in the PROCEDURE DIVISION, may have
some applicability to languages other than COBOL. This is especially
true with languages such as ADS-Online, the development language
used with IDMS, which is very COBOL-like, however, there may also
be some applicability to other procedural languages.