The DELETE statement is an extended source library statement. It removes COBOL statements from a source program that was included by a BASIS statement.
The sequence-number-field must be one of the following:
Each entry in the sequence-number-field must be separated from the preceding entry by a comma followed by a space. For example:
000250 DELETE 000010-000050, 000400, 000450
Source program statements can follow a DELETE statement. These source program statements are then inserted into the BASIS source program before the statement following the last statement deleted (that is, in the example above, before the next statement following deleted statement 000450).
If a DELETE statement begins in column 12 or higher and a valid sequence-number-field does not follow the keyword DELETE, the compiler assumes that this DELETE statement is a COBOL DELETE statement.
Usage note: If INSERT or DELETE statements are used to modify the COBOL source program provided by a BASIS statement, the sequence field of the COBOL source program must contain numeric sequence numbers in ascending order. The source file remains unchanged. Any INSERT or DELETE statements referring to these sequence numbers must occur in ascending order.