[open-cobol-list] How does Cobol parse the Procedure Division ?

[Patrick]

Hi Everyone

It's easy to see how Cobol can be parsed in all of the parts outside of 
the PROCEDURE DIVISION, statements end with periods.

I can't see how the compiler could understand what is going on in 
PROCEDURE though. Every language I know of has some sort of character to 
end a statement. It might be a non printable character but it's there.

PROCEDURE ends in a period and paragraphs end in periods but if we have 
a statement like this:

MOVE foo TO moo

I could see how the compiler would implicitly know that it ends one 
token after TO but we can also have:

 MOVE foo TO moo koo boo

Does the next reserved word that is not a part of the current sentence 
signify an end to the current statement and the final period indicate 
that there are no further statements coming ?

If this is true, was it always this way. From what I understand it was not.

If this is true did it dramatically increase the complexity of the compiler?

Thanks