MPE/iX Commands Reference Manual (32650-90864)

34 Chapter 2
Command Definitions A-B
Native Mode Command Structure
• The SETVAR command.
• The XEQ command.
These three exceptions allow the use of only specific delimiters when specifying
parameters, as defined below.
Also the ECHO command accepts all delimiters and treats them as part of the value to be
echoed
Invoking User Defined Commands
User defined commands may be structured to accept the KEYWORD=parm format, and you
may mix keyword and positional parameters. User command parameter lists allow you to
use the following to delimit parameters:
, comma
; semicolon
blank (one or more spaces)
= equal sign
For example, if the user defined command UDCA is defined as UDCA parm1,parm2,parm3
you could invoke it as follows:
UDCA X;Y;Z
or
UDCA X PARM2=Y,PARM3=Z
If the value of any parameter contains any of the above delimiters you must use quotes to
delimit the parameter string. For example, if I;J;K is a single string parameter value you
must delimit it with quotes (because it contains semi-colons) as follows:
UDCA "I;J;K"
The = sign is used only to delimit a parameter name from a parameter value. If the value of
a parameter contains an = sign, then you must delimit the value with quotes. For example:
UDCA PARM1="YES=OK"
Similarly, if a string value contains a quote, you must delimit it by a quote. As an example,
suppose you have a UDC which runs a program with the INFO string. The RUN command
within the UDC might look something like this:
RUN PROGNAME;INFO="!PARM"
If the value of the parameter were something like this: THE "END" IS NEAR, you would
invoke the UDC like this:
UDCA PARM="THE ""END"" IS NEAR"
Or, you could enter this:
UDCA "THE ""END"" IS NEAR"