What is the difference between COBOL-74 and COBOl-85

vodeti · New User Joined: 19 Sep 2005 Posts: 13

Hello friends

What is the difference between COBOL-74 and COBOl-85?

Bye
vani

Title changed from "VS COBOL-II" to "difference between COBOL-74 and COBOl-85?" : Priyesh.

Umesh Kumar · Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:33 pm

Hi Vani,

COBOL-85 is a later version of COBOL language. COBOL-85 also known as VS COBOL-II provides more features than COBOL-74. Some of the features of COBOL-85 are:
1. In COBOL-85 we can use following delimiters such as END-IF, END-PERFORM,END-STRING,etc.
2. We can use EVALUATE verb in place of complex IF structures.
3. CALL statement can pass variables by CONTENT and BY reference. In COBOL-74 we can only use pass by reference.
4. A new verb CONTINUE is introduced in order to over come the limitations of NEXT SENTENCE verb.
5. COBOL - 85 supports 32 bit addressing mode.

There are many more differences, that you can find from any COBOL-85 book. You can refer the book 'COBOL PROGRAMMING - By M K Roy and Ghosh Dastidar'.

I hope now you are somewhat clear about the difference.

Regards,
Umesh