It is fairly normal for COBOL development teams to decide to work either with sections or with paragraphs and to make this choice a standard.

When sections are used, it is also normal to define another standard: "End every section definition with an empty paragraph definition, or a paragraph containing only a terminating statement".

This empty paragraph can then be jumped to with a ``++GO TO++`` statement to stop the execution of a section.

Accepted terminating statements in the otherwise-empty ending paragraph are: ``++EXIT++``, ``++EXIT PROGRAM++``, ``++STOP RUN++``, and ``++GO BACK++``.


== Noncompliant Code Example

In this example, an empty paragraph is missing at the end of the first section definition.

----
FIRST_SECTION SECTION.
  ...

SECOND_SECTION SECTION.
  ...
SECOND_SECTION_END.
----


== Compliant Solution

----
FIRST_SECTION SECTION.
  ...
FIRST_SECTION_END.

SECOND_SECTION SECTION.
  ...
SECOND_SECTION_END.
----



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