Next Sentence in COBOL

In COBOL programming language we have three types of logical statements:

1. Sequence Statements: Used when we need to execute some piece of code repeatedly till some sequence. Like reading each data/record from some file till the end.

2. Selection Statements: Used when we want to flow the program based on some condition results, Like IF-ELSE condition or we can say true - a false type of condition.

3. Iteration Statements: It is nothing but loop statements, used when we want to execute some code repeatedly based on some condition

Next Sentence:

In COBOL Next Sentence will be used to pass the control to the next executable statement, next to the states where it finds the period(i.e. dot "."). As we know COBOL will consider the period as the end of the ongoing statement. 

Syntax: 

             NEXT SENTENCE                                                                                                       

 Example: 

COBOL program for Next Sentence
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. NEXTSENTENCE.
DATA DIVISION.
    WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
    01 WS-EMP-NAME                 PIC X(20).
    01 WS-EMP-RATING               PIC 9(01).
    01 WS-BONUS                    PIC 9(06)V99.
    01 WS-SALARY                   PIC 9(06)V99 VALUE 600000.00.
    01 WS-INCREMENTED-SALARY       PIC 9(07)V99.
    01 WS-PERCENT                  PIC 9(03)V99 VALUE ZEROES.
    01 WS-FLAG                     PIC X(01).    
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
    DISPLAY 'ENTER THE NAME OF EMPLOYEE: '
    ACCEPT WS-EMP-NAME
    DISPLAY 'ENTER THE RATING OF EMPLOYEE OUT OF 5: '
    ACCEPT WS-EMP-RATING
    DISPLAY 'EMPLOYEE NAME IS: ' WS-EMP-NAME
    DISPLAY 'EMPLOYEE SALARY IS: ' WS-SALARY
    DISPLAY 'EMPLOYEE RATING IS: ' WS-EMP-RATING
    IF WS-EMP-RATING < 3 
       NEXT SENTENCE
    ELSE
       MOVE 'T' TO WS-FLAG
       DISPLAY 'ENTER THE BONUS OF EMPLOYEE: '
       ACCEPT WS-BONUS
       ADD WS-BONUS,WS-SALARY TO WS-INCREMENTED-SALARY
       COMPUTE WS-PERCENT = (WS-BONUS/WS-SALARY)*100
       DISPLAY 'INCREMENTAL PERCENTAGE : ' WS-PERCENT ' %'
       DISPLAY 'NEW SALARY IS : ' WS-INCREMENTED-SALARY
    END-IF.
    IF WS-FLAG = 'T'
       DISPLAY 'CONGRATULATION...'
    ELSE
       DISPLAY 'NO BONUS FOR EMPLOYEE...'
    END-IF.
STOP RUN.

Output:

Explanation:

In this example we are considering the annual appraisal of the employee in any organization, if the rating of the employee is more than '3' then he/she should get a bonus and his/her salary should get increase. so we are printing the incremented salary and incremented percentage of the employee in the positive test scenario.

For the negative test case, if the rating of the employee is less than 3 then we are using NEXT SENTENCE which will skip the adding bonus statement and directly come out of the program by displaying the final statement.