Occurs Clause:

Let us establish tables with the help of an illustration. Assume that there are ten different types of income-tax rates that are read from some input medium and these rates are stored in a table named INCOME-TAX-RATE. The DATA DIVISION entries for this table may be as

As shown below:

Clearly, there are ten different data names, like TAX-RATE-1, TAX-RATE-2 etc., in the table namely the INCOME-TAX-RATE and each of these items is of two digits. As the picture of all these items are similar, these can be explained by having just one entry and then specifying that the explanation is to be repeated ten times. This is completed as shown below:

01              INCOME-TAX-RATE

02  TAX-RATE    PIC  99  OCCURS  10  TIMES.

This OCCURS clause specifies that the table named INCOME-TAX-RATE is having ten elements and each one is of two digits. In order to refer to an individual element exclusively we should use a subscript. The initial element is referred to as TAX-RATE (1), the second one as TAX-RATE (2), the seventh one as TAX-RATE (7), and so on. TAX-RATE (1), TAX-RATE (2) etc., are termed as subscripted data names and 1, 2 etc., that are enclosed in parentheses and are known as subscripts.

The common format of OCCURS clause is as shown below:

  {OC}            integer        TIMES

  {OCCURS}