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Where logic is required to bypass or repeat operations, the GOTO statement can be used.

The following example processes a tape file with a logical record length of 38, and block size of 3160. The file consists of two different types of records:

• A header record, is always numeric in position 1 and 2.
• A transaction record, always has 'Z' in position 1.

The file is in ascending sequence of header records, but many header records may have the same number in positions 1 and 2.

It is required to select only the header records containing '81' in position 1 and 2, together with their associated 'Z' records, writing them to tape with an output blksize of 380.

At the same time we require a print of all the '81' Header records that were selected.

  READ TAPE10   LRECL=38           * LRECL reqd for VSE only.
  IF POS 1 NE '81'
    THEN GOTO GET                  * Implicit label for 1st logical stmt.

==LOOP==                       ** Only '81' records drop through to here **
  WRITE TAPE11    BLKSIZE=380
  IF POS 1 NE 'Z'
    THEN PRINT    STOPAFT=222      * Limit printing
  READ TAPE10                      * No need to repeat LRECL.
  IF POS 1 GT '81'                 * 'Z' is < '8'
    THEN GOTO EOJ
  GOTO LOOP                        * Prevent automatic GOTO GET.
 =LOOPE=                           * Unref'd label. '=' for readability only

The THEN GOTO GET statement will cause looping around the first READ statement until we find a record with 81 in position 1. On finding it, control will drop through to LOOP, our main loop.

Because (for EBCDIC) "Z" is lower than numerics, checking position 1 for greater than "81" will never be satisfied by a transaction record. So we keep looping around until either we get End-of-file, or we find a record with 82 or more in position 1 and 2.