procedure division

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.