The Unreferenced Data Report

Unreferenced data is data that is not explicitly referenced in the Procedure Division of a program. You generally want to eliminate such data. Unreferenced data often becomes part of a program as it is evolving; you might include a dummy data item for some reason, then forget to take it out.

The Unreferenced Data report includes the following information:

You should not, though, assume that it is safe for you to remove any data item displayed as unreferenced. You should particularly be aware of the following two cases:

For example, your program could contain the following group definition:

03 group-item.
	    05 elementary-item-1 pic x. 
	 05 elementary-item-2 pic xx. 
	 05 elementary-item-3 pic xxx.

If the program used the elementary-item-1, elementary-item-2, and elementary-item-3 fields, group-item would be flagged as being unreferenced (unless it was referenced explicitly elsewhere in the program). Alternatively, if the program used the group-item field, elementary-item-1, elementary-item-2, and elementary-item-3 would be flagged as unreferenced (unless they were referenced explicitly somewhere else in the program).