MPE/iX Commands Reference Manual (32650-90877)

26 Chapter2
Command Structure Defined
Native Mode Command Structure
For most CM commands, the CM parser processes quoted strings in the same way as the
NM parser. However, the CM parser limits the length of quoted strings to 255 characters.
Exceptions
There are four exceptions to the syntax governing MPE/iX commands:
• User command parameter lists (which may affect string quoting rules).
• 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