
The DELETE Statement - BASIS Control
The DELETE statement (under the BASIS mechanism) identifies lines of the
COBOL source file to be ignored by your COBOL system. Any COBOL statements
that follow the DELETE statement (up to the next BASIS mechanism INSERT or
DELETE statement in the edit control file) are included.
General Format

Syntax Rules
- The DELETE reserved word can commence anywhere between columns 1 and 66 of
the statement line.
- Sequence numbers can be included anywhere in columns 1 through 6 of the statement
and must be followed by a space.
- Subject-sequence-1, subject-sequence-2, and so on, must be 6-digit positive
integers (following the rules for integer numeric-literals).
- Subject-sequence-range-1, subject-sequence-range-2, and so on, must consist
of two subject-sequence numbers (as above) separated by a hyphen (-).
- The comma between subject-sequences and/or subject-sequence ranges is mandatory.
General Rules
- Subject-sequence-1, subject-sequence-2, and so on, refer to sequence numbers
of those statements within the COBOL source file which are to be ignored by
your COBOL system.
- Subject-sequence-range-1, subject-sequence-range-2, and so on, refer to inclusive
ranges of statement sequence numbers within the COBOL source file, all of
which statements are to be ignored when the intermediate code is produced.
- Any COBOL statements following the DELETE statement in the edit control file
up to the next BASIS mechanism DELETE or INSERT statement are included in
the source submitted to your COBOL system. These COBOL source statements are
inserted in place of the last statement omitted by this BASIS mechanism DELETE
statement.