procedure division

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English

Noun

procedure division (plural procedure divisions)

  1. (computing) The part of a COBOL program containing all the instructions that the computer is to execute
    • 1971, Allen Kent, Harold Lancour, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science:
      The procedure division contains the imperative, arithmetic, conditional, and other statements that create and manipulate the data.
    • 1999, Gordon Bitter Davis, The Blackwell encyclopedic dictionary of management information:
      The procedure division contains program logic to compute, manipulate data, and to iterate and branch through program execution.
    • 2003, Robert C. Seacord et al., Modernizing legacy systems:
      In the following alternative formulation of the procedure division, the PERFORM statement is used to execute a sequence of paragraphs.

Usage notes

  • The term is capitalized (as PROCEDURE DIVISION) in the COBOL source code.