SEARCH VERB:

The SEARCH verb is used to position elements in one-dimensional tables. Let us consider the following problem. Assume that each element of a table consists of three fields, viz., the account number of a person, name of that and the amount that he has deposited. There are 400 such elements in the table and we want to find out whether a specific name is present in the table or not. The preferred name is given in the field is termed as NAME and if this name appears in an element of the table, we would like to show the name as well as the corresponding account number and amount. The DATA DIVISION entries for this trouble are as shown below:

The PROCEDURE DIVISION statements below can be a solution to the above problem. 

In the above SEARCH statement, there are two sections- the AT END section and the WHEN section. If the condition NAME= NAME-OF-THE-PERSON (A1) is satisfied for some value the index name A1, the statement DISPLAY ACCOUNT-NUMBER (A1), NAM AMOUNT (A1) is executed. The AT END section is executed only when the whole table searched and the condition is not satisfied for any value of A1. The increment of A1 is take care by the SEARCH verb.