Enhanced functionality
In addition to the performance improvements offered on your existing programs through architecture exploitation and advanced optimizations, COBOL V6 also offers enhanced functionality in several areas.
Changes
in IBM® Enterprise COBOL for z/OS®, Version 6 Release 2 in
the Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Migration Guide contains
a complete list of new and changed functions in Enterprise COBOL V6.2.
Some highlights are:

- Support for parsing JSON using the new JSON PARSE statement
- Support for conditional compilation using the new IF, EVALUATE, and DEFINE directives
- Support for controlling the inlining of PERFORM statements using the new INLINE directive (only available in V6.2) and option (also available in V6.1 with service PTFs)
- Support for detecting invalid numeric data using the new NUMCHECK option (also available in V6.1 with service PTFs)
- Support for detecting corruption beyond the end of working storage caused by mismatched parameter blocks using the new PARMCHECK option (also available in V6.1 with service PTFs)

V6.2 continues to support all
of the new features introduced in V5 and V6.1.
Some highlights in V6.1 are:
- Support for the new ALLOCATE and FREE statements to obtain and release dynamic storage
- Enhancements to the INITIALIZE statement to support FILLER and VALUE clauses
- Support for generating JSON using the new GENERATE JSON statement
- Support for the new VSAMOPENFS and SUPPRESS options
- Enhancements to the SSRANGE option
Some highlights in V5.2 are:
- Enhancements to the following statements for increased compatibility
with ISO 2002 COBOL Standard:
- New keywords LEADING and TRAILING are added to the REPLACING phrase of the COPY statement and the REPLACE statement to improve partial-word replacement operations
- EXIT statement enhancements to provide a structured way to exit without using a GO TO statement
- Table SORT statement arranges table elements in a user-specified sequence
- Restored support for AMODE 24 and XMLPARSE(COMPAT)
- Support for the new options of COPYRIGHT, QUALIFY, RULES, SERVICE, SQLIMS, VLR, ZONEDATA, and NUMCHECK
- Enhancements to the ARCH and MAP options
- Remove the SIZE option, and the compiler manages memory dynamically
- New IBM extensions to COBOL:
- The >>CALLINTERFACE directive specifies the interface convention for CALL and SET statements
- The enhanced XML GENERATE statement
- Support for the VOLATILE clause in a data description entry
Some highlights in V5.1 are:
- XML GENERATE enhancements to provide more flexibility and control over the form of the XML document being generated
- XML parsing enhancing improvements through a new special register, XML-INFORMATION
- Support for UNBOUNDED tables and groups to enable top-down mapping of data structures between XML and COBOL applications
- A new set of Unicode intrinsic functions