I have never seen so many stupid people pretending to be halfway smart as in this section Its COBOL not Cobol and it does not represent years as strings you morons You use two digits  digits not strings  in WORKING STORAGE denoting them as  meaning directly two digits In IBMs own collating sequence of course  Why dont you people just bugger out of here and leave this high brow stuff to people with an education and an IQ above that of your ilk  that of the common ape