Editing COBOL Std 1 Purpose and Scope

== 1. Purpose and Scope ==

This document defines the baseline coding standard for COBOL programs targeting GnuCOBOL 4.x on Linux, with optional GixSQL pre-processing for embedded PostgreSQL access. It applies to all newly written programs, to programs undergoing significant modification, and to reverse-engineering or migration work.

The standard covers four concerns:

* Source-code layout and formatting
* Naming conventions for data items, paragraphs, copybooks, and files
* Structural and architectural patterns (divisions, tiers, method-dispatch)
* Error handling, embedded SQL, and output formatting rules

{{Ambox
| type  = notice
| text  = '''Compliance note''' — Existing programs may deviate from this standard. Any modification touching more than 20 % of a program's statements must bring the changed portions into conformance.
}}

----

----
''[[COBOL Programming Standard|← Back to index]]''
<hr/>
[[Cobol programming standards]] | [[Cobol and PostgreSQL]]