Re: CL compiled, but I don't think it should have -- MIDRANGE-L


On 17/11/2006, at 8:36 AM, AGlauser@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Really?! I'm very surprised by that ... most other languages I canthink
of insist on character literals being delimited in some way, to
differentiate them from variables.  Thinking about it from the point of
view of 'what would I actually type on the command line', I guess itsort
of makes sense.

That's exactly the reason. Commands in CL programs follow the samerules as commands entered on the command line. Would be very confusingotherwise.

However, if the compiler won't let me do:

CHGVAR VAR(var1) VALUE(&A + myCharLiteral + &B),


There are two things wrong with that statement:

1) Missing & from var1 (which would cause CPD0081 "Variable namerequired for parameter")2) + is the ADDITION operator (which would cause CPD0130 "Operandsmust be numeric for parameter VALUE"). CL ain't RPG IV ya know.


However CL will allow:
                CHGVAR VAR(&var1) VALUE(&A *CAT myCharLiteral *CAT &B)
which is consistent with its own rules.

I'm not really sure why it would let me use a non-delimited character
literal in any context in a compiled program.

Makes no difference that CL is 'compiled' in a program. CL commandsfollow the same rules regardless of where they are used otherwise youmight have to quote all sorts of things and how ugly would that be:dspobjd obj('MYLIB'/'MYOBJ') objtype(*pgm) output(*outfile)outfile('QTEMP'/'JUNK')


Single quotes are only required when:
        a) The value contains special characters like spaces

b) The value must contain lower-case characters (and CASE(*MIXED) isnot specified)


Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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