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The Date-Compiled Paragraph

General Format


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Directives

  1. In addition to Compiler directives which provide flagging and modify the reserved word list, the following directives may impact either the syntax or semantics described in this section.
    • DATE - impacts the format in which the date is printed in this paragraph.

Syntax Rules

  1. The comment-entry can be any combination of the characters from the computer's character set. The continuation of the comment entry by use of the hyphen is not permitted; however, the comment entry can be contained on one or more lines. The comment-entry lines must be contained in area B. The next line commencing in area A will begin the next non-comment paragraph.

General Rules

  1. The paragraph-name DATE-COMPILED causes your COBOL system to insert a date comment-entry as the executable code is created. If a Date-Compiled paragraph is present (with or without a comment-entry), the paragraph is replaced in the program listing with one of the form: 
     DATE-COMPILED. current-date-and-time .

    where the date and time format is DD-MMM-YY hh:mm .

    The DATE Compiler directive can impact the comment-entry replacement string for your COBOL implementation.

    The value inserted in the Date-Compiled paragraph is also the value used in the WHEN-COMPILED intrinsic function. However, the format can differ.

Parent topic: Identification Division
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