Table of Contents

Getting Started in COBOL Programming; The Basic Program Structure; Data Division Elements and the Arithmetic Verbs; Program Design; COBOL Structure Statements; A Simple Payroll Program; Pictures and Related Topics; Debugging; Control Breaks; Data Representation and Related Topics; Compound Conditionals; The Seed Catalogue Program; Updating Sequential Files; Table Handling; File Storage Devices and Programming; Character Manipulation; The Report Writer; The COBOL Sort Subprograms; Additional COBOL Topics; Interactive COBOL; Appendix 1: COBOL Reserved Words; Appendix II: Composite Language Skeleton; Appendix III: Programming Standards.