COBOL-CASE is a naming convention where all letters are uppercase and words are separated by hyphens: "MY-VARIABLE-NAME". It is named after the COBOL programming language, which historically used this format for all identifiers.

Where is COBOL-CASE used?

COBOL-CASE is primarily used in COBOL programs, which are still widely deployed in banking, insurance, and government mainframe systems processing trillions of dollars of transactions daily. It also appears in some legacy EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) formats and mainframe JCL (Job Control Language).

What is the difference between COBOL-CASE and SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE?

Both use all uppercase letters, but SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE uses underscores as separators (MAX_VALUE) while COBOL-CASE uses hyphens (MAX-VALUE). COBOL historically did not allow underscores in identifiers, hence the hyphen convention.

What is the difference between COBOL-CASE and Train-Case?

Both use hyphens, but COBOL-CASE uses all uppercase letters (LIKE-THIS), while Train-Case capitalizes only the first letter of each word (Like-This). COBOL-CASE can be thought of as "screaming kebab-case".

How does the converter handle existing delimiters?

The converter splits input on spaces, underscores, dots, existing hyphens, and camelCase/PascalCase boundaries, then uppercases every word and joins with hyphens. Any input format produces correct COBOL-CASE output.

Is my text stored on your servers?

No. All conversion happens locally in your browser. Your text never leaves your device.

COBOL-CASE Converter

Convert text to COBOL-CASE online - uppercase words joined by hyphens. Free COBOL case converter, no signup required.

🔒 Your text stays in your browser - nothing is sent to our servers

Input

0Characters

0No spaces

0Words

0Sentences

0Lines

< 1 minRead time

Result

How to Use

Three steps to get started

Paste your text

Enter any text, phrase, camelCase, snake_case, or other format into the input.

Converts to COBOL-CASE

All letters uppercased, words joined with hyphens - like THIS-IS-COBOL-CASE.

Copy the result

Click Copy and paste into your COBOL program, legacy system, or EDI format.

About This Tool

COBOL-CASE: uppercase with hyphens

COBOL-CASE is a naming convention in which every letter of an identifier is uppercase and words are joined by hyphens, producing names likeCUSTOMER-ACCOUNT-BALANCE. It takes its name from COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), designed by a committee including Grace Hopper and standardized in 1959, which required this shape for every data name and paragraph label in a program.

Two historical constraints produced the convention. Early punched-card equipment and the EBCDIC character sets used on IBM mainframes made uppercase the practical default, and the COBOL grammar reserved the underscore for other purposes while explicitly permitting the hyphen inside user-defined words. The result is a format that reads unusually in most modern languages - a hyphen normally parses as subtraction - but is completely unambiguous inside COBOL's fixed-format source.

Where you will encounter it:

COBOL WORKING-STORAGE data items: WS-CUSTOMER-NAME, WS-TOTAL-AMOUNT
Paragraph and section names in the PROCEDURE DIVISION: READ-INPUT-FILE, CALCULATE-INTEREST
ANSI X12 and EDIFACT EDI element labels such as SENDER-ID and RECEIVER-ID
JCL job and step naming conventions on z/OS: PAYROLL-JOB, STEP-EXTRACT
HTTP header names, which follow the closely related Content-Type hyphenated pattern

Why does anyone still write COBOL-CASE?

Because COBOL never left. Reuters and IBM figures repeatedly cited across the industry put roughly 220 billion lines of COBOL in active production, concentrated in core banking ledgers, insurance policy administration, airline reservation systems, and government benefits platforms. Developers modernizing those systems constantly translate between modern identifiers and the mainframe copybook names they map to - turning customerAccountBalance from a Java DTO intoCUSTOMER-ACCOUNT-BALANCE for the COBOL side of the interface.

The converter is deliberately format-agnostic on input. It splits on spaces, underscores, dots, existing hyphens, and camelCase or PascalCase boundaries, then uppercases each token and rejoins with hyphens - so orderLineItem,order_line_item, and Order Line Item all yieldORDER-LINE-ITEM. Watch one gotcha: COBOL identifiers may not begin or end with a hyphen and are limited to 30 characters in most compilers, so trim long phrases before pasting them into a copybook.

Nothing you paste is uploaded. The transformation is a few lines of JavaScript running inside your own tab, which matters when the identifier names come from a proprietary internal schema.

FAQ

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