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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-18T10:55:11+00:00

I am a new comer to programming in COBOL and I am having difficulty

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I am a new comer to programming in COBOL and I am having difficulty at something that probably should be trivial. I am wanting to find the min and max of what the user enters. When the user hits 0 the max, min, and avg should display. The avg is easy but the min and max had me wondering. If this was JAVA or another lang I’d just do some scenario with comparing MAX INT value. Unfortunately High-Value and Low-Value in COBOL are not Integer values???? So I decided to put the user’s entries in a table and then use the intrinsic functions to do what I need. However as soon as I attempt to compute like this:

 compute Min-Result = Function Min (Num-Field(ALL))

I get an error that says, “syntax error, unexpected all.” I am totally confused at this point on what to do and why I get this error. I am using OpenCOBOL 1.1 Mingw. Here is my complete code. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Anything at all. I also made sure no lines were over 72.

     identification division.
       program-id.  lab1a.
      * no envionrment division since there are no files needed, etc.
       data division.
       working-storage section.

      * declaring proper variables to store integer values
       01  Max-Result        PIC S9(5).
       01  Min-Result        PIC S9(5).
       01  Count-Val         PIC 9  Value 0.
       01  Running-Tot       PIC S9(10)v99.
       01  First-Zero        PIC 9  Value 1.
       01  Final-Format-Avg       PIC ZZZZZ9.9999.
       01  Avg-Ent              PIC S9(5)v9999.
       01  Calc-Table.
            03  Table-Record  Occurs 1 to 500 times
                              depending on Entered-Num.
                05  Num-Field    PIC S9(5).
       01  Entered-Num       PIC S9(5).

       procedure division.
       000-Main.



           perform with test after until Entered-Num = 0
              display "Enter a 4-digit number (0 to stop): "
                 with no advancing
              accept Entered-Num

              add 1 to Count-Val
              add Entered-Num to Running-Tot

              display Running-Tot
              display Count-Val
              move Entered-Num to Num-Field(Count-Val)



      * this way every time the user enters a non zero number it will be re-assigned
      * to the variable Ending-Num. If they enter zero the if condition is skipped, the
      * loop condition is tested at the top and is ended.


           end-perform.
           subtract 1 from Count-Val
           display Count-Val
           display " "  
           display " "    
      *WATCH FOR TRUNCATION ERROR.....
           Divide Running-Tot By Count-Val Giving Avg-Ent
           move Avg-Ent to Final-Format-Avg

      *******WHY DOES THIS NOT WORK???????*********************** 
           compute Min-Result = Function Min (Num-Field(ALL))
           compute Max-Result = Function Max (Num-Field(ALL))


           if First-Zero = 0
           display "The first number you entered was zero. 
 &                  Next time enter a different one."
           else                
           display "The lowest value entered: " Min-Result             
           display "The highest value entered: " Max-Result
           display "The average value entered: " 
                    Final-Format-Avg
           end-if

           stop run.
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You have “Entered-Num” as your Occurs Depending On field. Entered-Num by the time you use the function is zero. It should be Count-Val.

    That’s not the problem, but you asked.

    Look at a 2009 OpenCobol Programmer’s Guid, I can find no confirmation that ALL is supported.

    It will be much simpler/faster to keep a “lowest value” and a “highest value” and compare to/replace as necessary with the entered number.

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