Transfer of Control

In the Procedure Division, unless there is an explicit control transfer or there is no next executable statement, program flow transfers control from statement to statement in the order in which the statements are written. (See Note below.) This normal program flow is an implicit transfer of control.

In addition to the implicit transfers of control between consecutive statements, implicit transfer of control also occurs when the normal flow is altered without the execution of a procedure branching statement. The following examples show implicit transfers of control, overriding statement-to-statement transfer of control:

COBOL provides explicit control transfers through the execution of any procedure branching or conditional statement.