Special characters @, !, and #
The characters at sign (@), exclamation mark (!), and number sign (#) have special usage in the Workload Automation Programming Language syntax.
at sign (@)
- Used to identify object variables and to generate email addresses that have no qualifying domain name.
exclamation mark (!)
- The default value for variable prefixing when
VARSUB SCAN
is activated. number sign (#)
- Used in object variables to prefix count fields to indicate the
number of segments of a particular type. It is also used as a count
indicator for
VARSET ENVATTR
.
However, these characters can be displayed differently when different
code pages for different countries are used. They appear exactly as
documented for US English (CP 37) and United Kingdom (CP 285); instead,
some or all of them might appear differently in code pages for other
languages. To find out what the characters actually are for your code
page, run the SHOW OPTIONS
command.
SHOW OPTIONS
command
using a non-English code page (CP 280):OPTIONS
keywords are available
to set the characters to the value you want to use in your code page: CHARAT
- Sets a character to replace the at sign (@) for object variables.
CHARBANG
- Sets a character to replace the exclamation mark (!) for the default variable prefix.
CHARHASH
- Sets a character to replace the number sign (#) for object and
ENVATTR
count values. CHARMAIL
- Sets a symbol to replace the at sign (@) used in email addresses.
CHARAT
and CHARMAIL
are
separate keywords, because the at sign (@) for email addresses must
match what is used by the SMTP service, which is external to Workload Automation Programming Language.
The at sign (@) in object variables affects only Workload Automation Programming Language.
OPTIONS
you cannot use standard
upper or lower case alphabetic characters, numbers, minus signs (-),
or periods (.). They must not be in conflict with any other CHARxxxx
or VARNAMES
keyword.
Setting OPTIONS CHARAT(@) CHARBANG(!) CHARHASH(#) CHARMAIL(@)
in
your code page ensures that the special characters appear as documented
in your system.OPTIONS
keywords
change only these characters for the uses specified. When the same
characters are used as part of the data in your system, or part of
field names in OUTPUT
statements or object
variables, the characters are displayed according to your code page.