NET/MASTER Network Control Language (NCL) Programmer's Guide

3 An NCL Tutorial
106160 Tandem Computers Incorporated 3–1
Perhaps the best way to learn how to use NCL is to write a couple of NCL procedures
and execute them. This section guides you through the steps required to do so. This
section covers the following topics:
What you need to do before you start using NCL
Getting started with NCL procedures
Getting started with functions
Writing a MSGPROC NCL procedure
What to do after completing this tutorial
This section has two purposes: to lead you through the mechanical tasks of creating,
checking, and executing NCL procedures; and to give you a feeling for the language.
Explaining the mechanics means explaining how to use Edit Services to create and
check NCL procedures. It also means explaining how to use Operator Control
Services (OCS) to execute NCL procedures.
The basic building blocks of the language are procedures, functions, core statements,
verbs, variables, expressions, labels, and comments. This section does not discuss the
details of the language and it certainly does not cover the whole language, but it does
look at what is important to get you started using NCL.