WORKING-STORAGE Section

The Working-Storage Section is used to define data items local to the program that do not reside in files.

General Format

WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.

   [ record-description ] ...

General Rules

  1. Storage level 01, 77, and 78 data descriptions in Working-Storage must be unique since they cannot be qualified.
  2. Subordinate data names need not be unique if they can be made unique through qualification.
  3. Unless given a value by a VALUE clause, each data item defined in Working-Storage is initialized to spaces or the value specified with the -Dv compile option.
  4. Level 01 and 77 data items in Working-Storage may be declared to be external, which means they are shared by more than one program.

    Each program of a run unit that declares an external data item may access that item. Any change to the item made by one program is automatically seen by all the other programs. External data items may be shared between COBOL and C programs.

Parent topic: Data Division