The SORT statement orders a table. It sorts the table elements based on the keys as specified in the OCCURS for the table. The table keys as specified in the OCCURS can be overridden with keys as specified in the SORT statement. If no key is specified, the table elements are the SORT keys. Format - SORT table-name [ ON { ASCENDING } KEY { sortkey } ... ] ... [ { DESCENDING } ] [ WITH DUPLICATES IN ORDER ] [ COLLATING SEQUENCE IS alpha ].
1 – table-name
is a table described with OCCURS in the Data Division.
2 – sortkey
is the data-name of a data item in the table-name table.
3 – alpha
is an alphabet-name defined in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph of the Environment Division.