Questions in: COBOL

A Scope Terminator, as the name suggests, it terminates the scope of something. A scope terminator ends a verb or statement. Scope terminators can be explicit or implicit.

In COBOL, scope terminators are optional, but used as a better coding practice.

Explicit scope terminators:

Explicit scope terminators end a verb without ending a sentence. They consist of END followed by a hyphen and the name of the verb being terminated, such as END-IF.

Example of Explicit scope terminator:

IF ITEM = "A"
DISPLAY "THE VALUE OF ITEM IS " ITEM
ADD 1 TO TOTAL
MOVE "C" TO ITEM
DISPLAY "THE VALUE OF ITEM IS NOW " ITEM
END-IF ---> IF statement end here

IF ITEM = "B"
ADD 2 TO TOTAL
END-IF ---> IF statement end here

Listed below some of the important explicit scope terminators.
END-ADD
END-PERFORM
END-ACCEPT
END-CALL
END-COMPUTE
END-DELETE
END-DISPLAY
END-DIVIDE
END-EVALUATE
END-IF
END-MULTIPLY
END-READ
END-RETURN
END-REWRITE
END-SEARCH
END-START
END-STRING
END-SUBTRACT
END-UNSTRING
END-WRITE

Implicit scope terminator:

An implicit scope terminator is a period (.) that ends the scope of all previous statements not yet ended.

Example:of Implicit scope terminator:

IF ITEM = "A"
DISPLAY "THE VALUE OF ITEM IS " ITEM
ADD 1 TO TOTAL
MOVE "C" TO ITEM
DISPLAY "THE VALUE OF ITEM IS NOW " ITEM. ---> IF statement end here

IF ITEM = "B"
ADD 2 TO TOTAL. ---> IF statement end here