v1.0

Otterkit COBOL Metalanguage

Throughout this documentation website we'll be explaining COBOL syntax using a slightly modified version of the COBOL Metalanguage. This allows for more convenient formatting on this website.

The changes were made due to Markdown not allowing underlined text, and also because vertically stacking different tokens inside of braces and brackets is impractical in plain text and Markdown1.

The COBOL metalanguage was originally developed by the CODASYL committee for the COBOL specifications.

AppearanceExamplePurpose
CapitalizedFUNCTIONOptional reserved word
Bold with an AsteriskACCEPT*Required reserved word
Braces{ --, -- }2Only one token can be chosen
Brackets[ -- ]Zero or one tokens can be chosen
Ellipsis...The previous token can be repeated
Braces with bars{| --, -- |}One or more tokens can be chosen, but any token can only be chosen once
Brackets with bars[| --, -- |]One or more tokens can be chosen, but any token can only be chosen once

Footnotes

  1. Instead of vertically stacking tokens and reserved keywords, we're separating them with commas, which is more practical than scaling the size of the braces and brackets to fit all vertically stacked tokens inside.

  2. The " --, -- " inside of the braces and brackets represent the different tokens and words separated by commas.