Editing For loop (section)

===1960: COBOL===
{{Further|COBOL}}
[[COBOL]] was formalized in late 1959 and has had many elaborations. It uses the PERFORM verb which has many options. Originally all loops had to be out-of-line with the iterated code occupying a separate paragraph. Ignoring the need for declaring and initializing variables, the COBOL equivalent of a ''for''-loop would be.

<syntaxhighlight lang="cobol">
      PERFORM SQ-ROUTINE VARYING I FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL I > 1000

      SQ-ROUTINE
             ADD I**2 TO SUM-SQ.
</syntaxhighlight>

In the 1980s, the addition of in-line loops and ''[[structured programming]]'' statements such as END-PERFORM resulted in a ''for''-loop with a more familiar structure.

<syntaxhighlight lang="cobol">
      PERFORM VARYING I FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL I > 1000
             ADD I**2 TO SUM-SQ.
      END-PERFORM
</syntaxhighlight>
If the PERFORM verb has the optional clause TEST AFTER, the resulting loop is slightly different: the loop body is executed at least once, before any test.