HP 3000 Manuals

HP COBOL II/XL Reference Manual

Chapter 3  Program Elements 

All COBOL language constructs are made up of basic elements comprised of
character strings and separators.  A character string is a character or
sequence of characters that forms a COBOL word, literal, PICTURE
character string, or comment entry (as defined later in this chapter).
Every character string is enclosed by a separator that is either a single
special character (such as a period, comma, semicolon, or blank) or a
sequence of special characters.  The characters that you can use in
character strings and separators are selected from the COBOL character
set, described in this chapter under "Character Set."

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation