CANCEL statement

Remarks#

The CANCEL statement ensures that a referenced program will be in an initial state the next time it is called, and to unload any resources for the module.

CANCEL statement

CALL "submodule"
CALL "submodule"

CANCEL "submodule"
CALL "submodule"

Any static data in the working set of submodule will be in an initial state on the last CALL statement above. The second CALL will have any initial values set as left overs from the first CALL.

COBOL compilers can support physical cancel (object unloaded from memory) and/or virtual cancel (ensure an initial state, but leave the object available to the host operating environment). This is an implementation detail.

See https://open-cobol.sourceforge.net/faq/index.html#cancel for more details.