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I hope you don't mean SECTION, literally. I have been campaigning to deprecate and eventually eliminate SECTIONs from the Procedure Division completely. So many bugs have been caused by programmers who don't know the difference between performing a SECTION and performing a Paragraph. Paragraphs are all that is needed, I would not vote for any enhancement that requires the use of SECTIONs.
This Idea was discussed internally. Nested COBOL programs is the suggested recommendation to achieve this sort of functionality. Any other change that we would implement would still require users to modify/change their existing code. If changes to user code are required either way, we suggest changing it to use nested programs.
As a PL/I programmer as well as COBOL, let me also suggest that the word DECLARE, or a simple DCL should be enough for the commpiler to recognize this is a variable declaration. For example, starting in Column 8 (assuming full-line statemenst will not have been emplemented before this is actioned)
DCL iCount Pic s9(9) Binary value 0.
If you need a structure, you code a "1" in front of the variable. Otherwise a "77" is assumed for DCL
Do we really need a LOCAL-STORAGE SECTION?
Such a great idea. Would be a huge Improvement and would reduce a lot of bugs.
This idea is being investigated further.