TACL Reference Manual

Lexical Elements

HP NonStop TACL Reference Manual—429513-018

2-2

Special Characters

There are six types of characters that have special meaning to TACL:

Metacharacters

The interpretation of special characters as metacharacters depends on the setting of

the #INFORMAT Built-In Variable on page 9-197. The display of special characters

depends on the setting of the #OUTFORMAT Built-In Variable on page 9-275.

The #INFORMAT built-in variable affects the interpretation of special characters read

from the IN file, including terminal input and files read by the OBEY command.

#INFORMAT can have one of three values:

•

TACL: Metacharacters have full effect.

•

PLAIN: Metacharacters are treated as ordinary characters.

•

QUOTED: If metacharacters are contained within quotation marks (“ ”), they are

treated as ordinary text.

?TACL MACRO files, ?TACL ROUTINE files, and library files read by LOAD or #LOAD

are read in TACL format unless they contain ?FORMAT directives that specify PLAIN

or QUOTED format. For more information about the ?FORMAT directive, see

Section 5, Statements and Programs.

Character Name Description

Metacharacters Requests that TACL interpret subsequent text in a special way

Separator Delineates keywords, variable names, and so forth

Question mark Command line editing directive

Ampersand Continues current line on the next physical line

Template Provides wild-card matching for file names

Operator Specifies arithmetic, relational, or logical operations

Note. TACL treats metacharacters as PLAIN when they are transmitted by #REQUESTER or

#SERVER, so characters obtained from these functions do not retain their special properties.

For example, square brackets in text obtained from a file opened by #REQUESTER do not

cause enclosed text to be expanded. This also applies to FILETOVAR and VARTOFILE, which

use the #REQUESTER built-in function.