HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Chapter 2 Concepts of the COBOL Language
Character Set
The most basic and indivisible unit of the language is the character.
The set of characters used to form COBOL character-strings and separators
includes the letters of the alphabet, digits and special characters, and
is defined below:
Character Meaning
0 to 9 Digits
A to Z Uppercase letters
a to z Lowercase letters (ANS85 only)
Space
+ Plus sign
- Minus sign or hyphen
* Asterisk
/ Oblique stroke/slash
= Equal sign
$ Dollar sign
. Period or decimal point
, Comma or decimal point
; Semicolon
" Quotation mark
' Apostrophe (OSVS, VSC2 and MFonly)
( Left parenthesis
) Right parenthesis
> Greater Than symbol
< Less Than symbol
: Colon (ANS85 only)
& Ampersand (MF and XOPEN only)
For ANS85 only: Lowercase letters can be used in character strings and
text words; except when used in nonnumeric literals, each lowercase
letter is equivalent to the corresponding uppercase letter.
This COBOL implementation is restricted to the above character set, but
the content of nonnumeric literals, comment lines, comment entries and
data can include any of the characters available under the character
encoding scheme used for the COBOL source program. (See the appendix
Character Sets and Collating Sequences)