NET/MASTER Network Control Language (NCL) Reference Manual

The Components of a Verb
Verb Syntax and Variable Access Methods
11–4 106126 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Here are some examples in which the qualifier can be a variable or an expression:
What You Type Comment
INTREAD TYPE=&TYPE The value of &TYPE must be REQ, RESP, or ANY.
INTCONT INTENS=&INTENS The value of &INTENS must be HIGH or LOW.
WRITE NRD=&NRD DATA=Hi The value of &NRD must be YES, NO, or OPER.
Mutually Exclusive
Operands
You can specify two mutually exclusive operands in a verb using expressions. The
expressions are evaluated at run time. One of the expressions must equate to a null
result.
An example of a verb that has two mutually exclusive operands is VARTABLE
ALLOC. The keywords are KEYFMT and KEYLEN. If you specify KEYFMT=CHAR,
you must specify the KEYLEN keyword. But if you specify KEYFMT=NUM, you
cannot specify the KEYLEN keyword. Here are some examples of VARTABLE
ALLOC, with and without KEYLEN:
VARTABLE ALLOC,
ID=GTABLE,
SCOPE=GLOBAL,
KEYFMT=CHAR,
KEYLEN=20
VARTABLE ALLOC,
ID=GTABLE,
SCOPE=GLOBAL,
KEYFMT=NUM
Here is an example of VARTABLE ALLOC with expressions on KEYFMT and
KEYLEN. If the value of &KEYFMT is NUM, the value of &KEYLEN must be null. (If
the qualifier to a keyword is null, NCL ignores the keyword.)
VARTABLE ALLOC,
ID=GTABLE,
SCOPE=GLOBAL,
KEYFMT=&KEYFMT,
KEYLEN=&KEYLEN
You cannot specify a keyword more than once with the intention that all expressions
but one equate to null. Here is an example of a verb that raises an error for this reason;
SCOPE appears three times:
VARTABLE ALLOC,
ID=GTABLE,
SCOPE=&GLOBAL,
SCOPE=&REGION,
SCOPE=&PROCESS,
KEYFMT=&KEYFMT,
KEYLEN=&KEYLEN