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.
