The Identification Division identifies the program,
class,
factory object, object, method,
, delegate, enum, operator,
valuetype
function or
interface.
This entire division (including the
division header) is optional in a program definition.
Another way to identify the first
source element defined in a file is with the basename, which is derived from
the filename of the file containing the source element.
The Identification Division consists of a number of paragraphs. The paragraph header identifies the type of information contained in the paragraph.
The Author, Installation, Date-Written, Date-Compiled, and
Security paragraphs are classed as obsolete elements in the ANSI'85 standard
and may be deleted from the next full revision of the ANSI Standard.
All dialects in this COBOL implementation except ISO2000
fully support these obsolete paragraphs. The FLAGSTD Compiler directive can be
used to detect all occurrences of this syntax.
Although they are a part of the
standard COBOL definition, the obsolete paragraphs are explicitly excluded from
the X/Open COBOL language definitions and should not be used in a conforming
X/Open source program.
If the Compiler directive
SOURCEFORMAT is specified as FREE, the comment-entry cannot be continued; the
next line begins the next non-comment entry.
The comment-entry can contain the
SKIP1, SKIP2, SKIP3, EJECT or TITLE statements anywhere on the line. These
statements are actioned if they are alone on a line in the comment-entry, and
do not terminate the comment-entry.
The comment-entry can contain the
SKIP1, SKIP2, SKIP3, or EJECT statements anywhere in the B margin. These
statements are actioned if they are alone on a line in the comment-entry, and
do not terminate the comment-entry.
The comment-entry can be contained in either
area A or area B of the comment-entry lines. However, the next occurrence in
area A of any one of the following COBOL words or phrases terminates the
comment-entry and begin the next paragraph or division: