Coding Standards for Database Files › Coding Standards for COBOL Programs › Naming Standards in COBOL › COBOL Field Naming Convention › Subroutine Naming Convention

Subroutine Naming Convention

• Hierarchy prefix—‘XX’ is a hierarchy level prefix, which is the same for all labels in a given subroutine:

  

• Subroutine mnemonic—MMMM is a mnemonic describing the subroutine. The following are reserved standard subroutine mnemonics:

  

Labels should be named to stress the construct type according to the following convention.

Note: This section primarily applies to COBOL ‘74, which lacks consistency in its ability to handle the most commonly used structured constructs. It is recommended that pseudo-constructs, with structured GOs, be used instead.

Label naming convention:

• Hierarchy prefix—‘XX’ is a hierarchy level prefix, as described above. (In ,CA 2E a suffix of Y or U is added to indicate whether the construct is part of the fixed program logic or user-defined; for example BBY-, XXU-).
• Label number—A four-digit integer to make the label unique.
• Construct type—A keyword indicating the structured programming construct the label represents.