IBM Mainframe Forum

OK, so it's not that much less simple. You have the line-numbers of the paragraphs from the cross-reference. You look between first and last of a paragraph (line before the next) and count per paragraph. Report every time you encounter a full-stop/period after you have counted to two.

Have you considered things like:or
There are cases where periods are legitimately in the code and NOT at the end of a paragraph.

For a separator full-stop/period it should be followed by a space. Column 72 full-stops seem initially tricky, but a blank in column 73 deals with that.

When "looking at" COBOL programs I always rely on the compiler doing most of the real work, and that includes issuing diagnostics (so the output is assumed to be clean of relevant diagnostics, so no need to code for those situations).

However, I guess something I didn't think about is that 123. is a valid numeric literal. Even if that gets reported, it is probably a good idea to get it "fixed"

BillyBoyo wrote:For a separator full-stop/period it should be followed by a space.

If the TS has in-line comments (depending upon their COBOL release), it'd mean additional code. Just my two pennies worth suggestion.

Good point Aki88

In-line comments would never fit in my code, but if they are or may be present (Enterprise COBOL V5.something onwards) then for the task you should obliterate them from the start ("*>") to the end of the line.

Let's assume there are no SQL statements, and no COPY/REPLACE in the PROCEDURE DIVISION whilst we are at it as well.