SETLL *START and %EQUAL

I have a program that has

 SETLL *START MyFile;
 IF %EQUAL();
       READ MyFile;
 ELSE;
      do something different;
 ENDIF;

In debug, I discovered that it does something different. My first thought was that maybe it's because the file is empty, but it wasn't.

After reading the manual, the closest thing I can see to saying why %EQUAL was *OFF was this:

"You can specify an indicator in positions 75-76 that is set on when a record is present whose key or relative record number is equal to the search argument. This information can also be obtained from the %EQUAL built-in function, which returns '1' if an exact match is found."

I guess there's an argument to be made that *START is not an exact match with whatever is in the first record, but one could also say that the first record is always a match for the first record.

I also noticed that the manual does not say what the effect of () around the search argument is.  My assumption there is that the () define a list of values that are converted to match the related key fields, but the manual does not say that.

Where is this stuff actually stated?

--
*Peter Dow* /
Dow Software Services, Inc.
909 793-9050
petercdow@xxxxxxxxx
pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

/