Group Items and Records

In COBOL, elementary variables can be grouped together into a hierarchical structure called a group item or record. This allows you to treat a set of related data either as a single entity (for example, to copy or display them) or as individual fields.

Level Numbers and Hierarchical Relations

To define a record, you use level numbers in the DATA DIVISION:

• Level 01: Defines the main record (the group name). It does not have its own PICTURE clause because its size is determined by the sum of its internal fields.
• Subordinate levels (05, 10, 15, etc.): Identify the subordinate fields belonging to the higher-level group. They can be elementary variables (with a PIC clause) or, in turn, other group items (sub-records).

01 WS-EMPLOYEE-RECORD.
    05 WS-EMP-ID       PIC 9(5).
    05 WS-EMP-NAME     PIC X(20).
    05 WS-EMP-SALARY   PIC 9(6)V99.

In this example, WS-EMPLOYEE-RECORD is a group structure containing three subordinate fields. If we reference WS-EMPLOYEE-RECORD, we read or write all 5 + 20 + 8 = 33 characters of the record at once.

The MOVE Statement and Group Items

We can assign values to individual elementary fields:

MOVE 10023 TO WS-EMP-ID.
MOVE "JOHN DOE" TO WS-EMP-NAME.

Or we can copy an entire record into another compatible record in a single operation:

MOVE WS-EMPLOYEE-RECORD TO WS-EMPLOYEE-BACKUP.

Try it yourself