HP 3000 Manuals

HP COBOL II/XL Reference Manual

Separators 

A separator is a punctuation character that delimits a character string.
Separators include:

   *   Spaces (one or more).

   *   A comma or semicolon immediately followed by a space, except when
       the comma is used in a PICTURE character string.

   *   A period that is followed by a space.  The period must be used
       only to indicate the end of a sentence, or as shown in formats.

   *   Left and right parentheses.  These must only appear as balanced
       pairs used to delimit subscripts, indices, arithmetic
       expressions,[REV BEG] conditions, reference-modifiers, or a list
       of function arguments.[REV END]

   *   Quotation marks or apostrophes.  These delimit nonnumeric
       literals, and must appear as balanced pairs (except as noted under
       "Continuation Lines" later in this chapter).  An opening quotation
       mark or apostrophe must be immediately preceded by a space or left
       parenthesis.  A closing quotation mark or apostrophe must be
       immediately followed by a space, comma, semicolon, period, or
       right parenthesis.

   *   Sets of two contiguous equal signs (==), used to delimit
       pseudo-text.  (Pseudo-text is text incorporated into, or replaced
       in, a COBOL program by the COPY or {REPLACE}} statement.)  An
       opening delimiter must be immediately preceded by a space; a
       closing delimiter must be immediately followed by a space, comma,
       semicolon, or period.  These delimiters must appear in balanced
       pairs.

Any of the above separators may, at your option, be immediately preceded
by one or more spaces, except if specifically prohibited by format rules.
(A space preceding a closing quotation mark is treated as part of the
literal enclosed by this and the preceding quotation mark.)

Any of the above separators, except the opening quotation mark, may be
optionally followed immediately by one or more spaces.  (A space
following an opening quotation mark is considered as part of the literal
enclosed by this and the next following quotation mark.)


NOTE  The above rules do not apply to punctuation characters within
      nonnumeric literals, comment entries, comment lines, or PICTURE
      character strings.  Those characters are not regarded as
      separators.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation