For all files that you process in your COBOL program, you need to define the files to the operating system with an appropriate system data definition.
Depending on the operating system, this system data definition can take any of the following forms:
The following examples show the relationship of a FILE-CONTROL entry to the system data definition and to the FD entry in the FILE SECTION:
(1) //OUTFILE DD DSNAME=MY.OUT171,UNIT=SYSDA,SPACE=(TRK,(50,5)) /*
(1) export OUTFILE=DSN(MY.OUT171),UNIT(SYSDA),SPACE(TRK,(50,5))
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION.
FILE-CONTROL.
SELECT CARPOOL
ASSIGN TO OUTFILE (1)
ORGANIZATION IS SEQUENTIAL.
. . .
DATA DIVISION.
FILE SECTION.
FD CARPOOL (2)
LABEL RECORD STANDARD
BLOCK CONTAINS 0 CHARACTERS
RECORD CONTAINS 80 CHARACTERS
SELECT CARPOOL . . . FD CARPOOL
related tasks
Optimizing buffer and device space
related references
FILE SECTION entries
File section (Enterprise COBOL Language Reference)