NET/MASTER Network Control Language (NCL) Reference Manual

Lexical Elements of NCL
Compiler Operation
8–8 106126 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Single quotes are used in the previous example to show that NCL will accept either,
provided that the same type of quote character is used on either side of the quoted
string.
Special Characters A character is considered as a special character when it acts as a delimiter in a
statement. Such a special character becomes simply another character when used
within a quoted string. Table 8-4 lists special characters.
Table 8-4. Special Characters
Character Name of Character
, Comma
( Opening parenthesis
) Closing parenthesis
: Colon
; Semicolon
Comma
You can use the comma (,) in a procedure or function call, between items in a list, or as
the line-continuation character. Examples of using the comma appear in the following
table:
Example Use of Comma
call proc1(a,b,c) Delimits parameters in a procedure call.
&a = func1(1,2,3) Delimits parameters in a function call.
msgread vars=(&a,&b,&c) Delimits items in a list.
f1: function share &a*,&b* Delimits items in a list.
The line-continuation character is described in “Terminating and Continuing a
Statement” later in this section.
Parentheses
Parentheses are mainly used in expressions. See Section 10, “Expressions and
Operators,” for more information and more examples. However, you can use
parentheses elsewhere: for example, when invoking a procedure or function.