MPE/iX Commands Reference Manual (32650-90877)

24 Chapter2

Command Structure Deﬁned

Native Mode Command Structure

• With or without leading zeros.

• As positive or negative numbers.

• Preceded by the $ sign indicating hexadecimal or base 16.

• Precdeded by the % sign indicating octal or base 8.

• Preceded by the # sign indicating decimal or base 10 (if neither $, % nor # is speciﬁed

base 10 is used).

• In the decimal range -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647.

For example, suppose you wanted to

suspend

spooling on LDEV 6, your system printer. You

could enter :

SPOOLER DEV=#0006;SUSPEND;SHOW

Or, because

decimal

is the default you could omit the # sign and enter:

SPOOLER DEV=0006;SUSPEND;SHOW

Or, omitting the leading zeroes you could enter:

SPOOLER DEV=6;SUSPEND;SHOW

When entering numbers as command parameters, it is advisable to omit leading zeros for

some commands parsed by the compatibility mode (CM) parser.

Using Quotes and Strings

The NM parser optionally accepts any

string

input in single or double quotes. For

example, because the ﬁle name parameter of the PRINT command is a

string

parameter,

you could enter it as follows:

PRINT FILENAME

PRINT "FILENAME"

PRINT 'FILENAME'

General Rules for Using Quotes

Quotes are

required

if the value of any string parameter contains any of the following

delimiters

, comma

; semicolon

blank (one or more spaces)

= equal sign

( left parentheses

) right parentheses

For example, suppose you want to set a variable called MYVAR to a value of ;(A). Because