BabyCobol: COPY

an instruction to insert contents from a different file

Format

argument literals are quoted with === on each side, like this: COPY FILENAME REPLACING ===XXX=== BY ===YYY===
Essentially, this statement is a big challenge for static code analysis tools and techniques, because it forces an additional phase of the analysis to collect all possible replacements done on the code. It can be implemented as a separate phase, known among legacy compiler developers as “COPY book expansion”, in which case the emphasis is shifted to the problem of traceability (because expansion changes line numbers, and error messages must report the original line numbers).

BabyCobol is a project by Dr. Vadim Zaytsev a.k.a. @grammarware. Page last updated in October 2023.