Rational Developer for System z
COBOL for Windows, Version 7.5, Language Reference


Continuation lines

Any sentence, entry, clause, or phrase that requires more than one line can be continued in Area B of the next line that is neither a comment line nor a blank line. The line being continued is a continued line; the succeeding lines are continuation lines. Area A of a continuation line must be blank.

If there is no hyphen (-) in the indicator area (column 7) of a line, the last character of the preceding line is assumed to be followed by a space.

The following cannot be continued:

However, alphanumeric literals and national literals in hexadecimal notation can be continued regardless of the kind of characters expressed in hexadecimal notation.

All characters that make up an opening literal delimiter must be on the same line. For example, Z“, G”, N“, NX”, or X“.

Both characters that make up the pseudo-text delimiter separator ”==“ must be on the same line.

If there is a hyphen in the indicator area of a line, the first nonblank character of the continuation line immediately follows the last nonblank character of the continued line without an intervening space.

Continuation of alphanumeric and national literals

Alphanumeric and national literals can be continued only when there are no multibyte characters in the content of the literal.

The following rules apply to alphanumeric and national literals that do not contain multibyte characters:

The rules are the same when an apostrophe is used instead of a quotation mark in delimiters.

If you want to continue a literal such that the continued lines and the continuation lines are part of one literal:

In the following examples, the number and size of literals created are indicated below the example:

|...+.*..1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+....5....+....6....+....7..
000001               ”AAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCCCCDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEE
      -              “GGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIJJJJJJJJJJKKKKKKKKKK
      -    ”LLLLLLLLLLMMMMMMMMMM“

|...+.*..1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+....5....+....6....+....7..
000003              N”AAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCCCCDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEE
      -              “GGGGGGGGGG”

|...+.*..1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+....5....+....6....+....7..
000005     “AAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCCCCDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEE
      -    ”GGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIJJJJJJJJJJKKKKKKKKKK
      -    “LLLLLLLLLLMMMMMMMMMM”

|...+.*..1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+....5....+....6....+....7..
000010     “AAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCCCCDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEE”
      -    “GGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIJJJJJJJJJJKKKKKKKKKK”
      -    “LLLLLLLLLLMMMMMMMMMM”

To code a continued literal where the length of each continued part of the literal is less than the length of Area B, adjust the starting column such that the last character of the continued part is in column 72.


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