Vadim Zaytsev aka @grammarware

BabyCobol: The Language Reference — Features per Level

If you’re following Software Evolution at UTwente, you are implementing BabyCobol in phases called “levels”. This page sorts features of BabyCobol into those levels.

All the videos can be found in the playlist on YouTube.

Level 0 Features:

(implement at your earliest convenience)

DIVISION IDENTIFICATION DIVISION PROCEDURE DIVISION

Level 1 Features: Core

ACCEPT ADD DISPLAY DIVIDE EVALUATE IF MOVE MULTIPLY PERFORM STOP SUBTRACT

MOVE is only atomic
PERFORM is only straight and TIMES

Level 2 Features: Full Lexical Analysis

position-based parsing
line continuations
case insensitivity
non-reserved keywords
whitespace insignificance

Level 3 Features: Data Static Semantics

DATA DIVISION NEXT SENTENCE LOOP PERFORM

OCCURS
LIKE
contracted expressions

Level 4 Features: Control Static Semantics

CALL COPY GO TO

PERFORM THROUGH

Level 5 Features: Data Full Semantics

DATA DIVISION MOVE

OF (sufficient qualification)
PICTURE and XV9Z…
SPACES, LOW-VALUES, HIGH-VALUES
all of MOVE (‘CORRESPONDING’ in COBOL’s terms)

Level 6 Features: Control Dynamic Semantics

ALTER GO TO SIGNAL

computable GO TO

BabyCobol is a project by Dr. Vadim Zaytsev a.k.a. @grammarware. Page last updated in May 2026.

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