Full Form of COBOL

Full Form of COBOL

COmmon Business Oriented Language

COBOL Full Form is COmmon Business Oriented Language. COBOL is a compiled computer programming language that is mainly intended for use in business sectors. This language is imperative, object oriented, and procedural. COBOL was designed by William Selden, Howard Bromberg, Jean Sammet, Gertrude Tierney, Vernon Reeves, and Howard Discount. It appeared for the first time in 1959. The standardization of COBOL happened in 1968. It has been restructured and revised for four times.

The syntax of COBOL is like the system used in the English language. This syntax was primarily designed to be highly readable and effectively self-documenting. COBOL makes use of the verbose syntax and 300 words that are reserved within the system. The primary intention behind its creation was to help the data processing in USDOD ( United States Department Of Defense ).



COBOL code can be divided into four different sections namely data, identification, procedure, and environment. It lacks a huge standard library. As the result, only One class, 87 variants of functions, and 43 different statements are specified by the standard of COBOL. It is available to be written in both fixed and free format. There is a lack of specialized programmers for COBOL. That is why modern software packages and languages are replacing this system.