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v The first character cannot be 0 through 9 or a period (.)
v The variable name cannot exceed 250 bytes. For names containing DBCS characters, count each
DBCS character as 2 bytes, and count the shift-out (SO) and shift-in (SI) as 1 byte each.
v SO (X'0E') and SI (X'0F') must delimit DBCS characters within a DBCS name. Also note that:
– SO and SI cannot be contiguous.
– Nesting of SO / SI is not permitted.
– A DBCS name cannot contain a DBCS blank (X'4040').
v The variable name should not be RC, SIGL, or RESULT, which are REXX special variables. More about
special variables appears later in this book.
Examples of acceptable variable names are:
ANSWER ?98B A Word3 number the_ultimate_value
Also, if OPTIONS ETMODE is the first instruction in your program, the following are valid DBCS variable
names, where < represents shift-out, > represents shift-in, X, Y, and Z represent DBCS characters, and
lowercase letters and numbers represent themselves.
<.X.Y.Z> number_<.X.Y.Z> <.X.Y>1234<.Z>
Variable Values
The value of the variable, which is the value the variable name represents, might be categorized as
follows:
v A constant, which is a number that is expressed as:
An integer (12)
A decimal (12.5)
A floating point number (1.25E2)
A signed number (-12)
A string constant (' 12')
v A string, which is one or more words that may or may not be within quotation marks, such as:
This value can be a string.
'This value is a literal string.'
v The value from another variable, such as:
variable1 = variable2
In the preceding example, variable1 changes to the value of variable2, but variable2 remains the same.
v An expression, which is something that needs to be calculated, such as:
variable2 = 12 + 12 - .6 /* variable2 becomes 23.4 */
Before a variable is assigned a value, its value is the value of its own name translated to uppercase. For
example, if the variable new has not been assigned a value, then
SAY new
produces
NEW
Exercises - Identifying Valid Variable Names
Which of the following are valid REXX variable names?
1. 8eight
2. £25.00
3. MixedCase
4. nine_to_five
5. result
Using Variables and Expressions
20
CICS TS for VSE/ESA: REXX Guide