5. Editor (REPORT WRITER)

The COBOL editor is a general-purpose module for automatically generating reports, relieving the programmer of the need to deal with line breaks, line counts, header edits, intermediate and general number totals, etc.

In editing, the homogeneous unit is the printer line, but the basic idea of the COBOL editor is to group lines into edit groups.

An ordered set of lines edited in succession and dependent on a single condition constitutes an edit group.

For a report, the EDITOR program must include :

• a file declaration in ENVIRONMENT and DATA DIVISION ;

• a report description in a special section of the DATA DIVISION, the REPORT SECTION, with the groups header, detail, footer, end of report, etc. ;

• state...