A constant is a data item that has only one value. COBOL does not define a construct for constants. However, you can define a data item with an initial value by coding a VALUE clause in the data description (instead of coding an INITIALIZE statement).
Data Division. 01 Report-Header pic x(50) value “Company Sales Report”. . . . 01 Interest pic 9v9999 value 1.0265.
The example above initializes an alphanumeric and a numeric data item. You can likewise use a VALUE clause in defining a national or DBCS constant.
related tasks
Using national data (Unicode) in COBOL
Coding for use of DBCS support