Hour 10Processing Loops

The utility of computer programs is derived from their capability to perform repetitive tasks accurately and quickly. To do so, a programmer codes a processing loop. A processing loop is simply something in your program that happens over and over. The word loop comes from what it looks like in a flowchart. The flow of your program keeps looping repeatedly until some specified condition is reached. In this hour, you learn the basic steps you need to create processing loops in COBOL. The following topics are discussed:

• The Perform statement

• COBOL Sections and Paragraphs

• Program flow in the Procedure Division

• The use of Go To in structured programming design

Figure 10.1 shows a simple processing loop. You can follow ...

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