TACL Reference Manual

Built-In Functions and Variables
HP NonStop TACL Reference Manual—429513-018
9-198
#INFORMAT Built-In Variable
PLAIN
specifies that TACL should not translate characters read from IN, but should
consider everything to be ordinary text; for example, braces and double equal
signs are read as such and are not interpreted as comments in PLAIN mode.
QUOTED
causes TACL to translate metacharacters as if the formatting mode were
TACL, but if text containing such characters is enclosed in quotation marks,
TACL treats embedded metacharacters as if they were ordinary text (no tildes
are needed). The #SET and #SETV built-in functions operate in different ways:
#SET treats quotes as plain text; #SETV does not include the quotes (see
Examples).
TACL
causes TACL to translate the metacharacters [ and ] (square brackets), { and }
(braces), | (vertical line), == (double equals), and ~ (tilde) into internal notation.
TACL reads square brackets as the beginning and ending of an invocation. A
vertical line indicates a label in an enclosure. TACL reads braces and double
equals as comments.
Using a tilde causes TACL to interpret the next character as plain text, rather
than a delimiter; for example, TACL reads ~[ as an ordinary open square
bracket, rather than the beginning of an invocation. To use a tilde character as
text, double it (~~). The tilde has no effect on its own, but only in conjunction
with other characters.
When using the TACL format, you can put several commands on a single line
by separating the commands with a tilde and a semicolon (~;). TACL translates
these into internal end-of-line characters.
You can also use a tilde and an underscore (~_) when #INFORMAT is set to
TACL. TACL translates this notation into an internal space. These metaspaces
are printed as spaces if you use the PRETTY option with #OUTFORMAT;
otherwise, they are treated as ordinary characters.
Examples
If you specify special characters in an IN file, #INFORMAT affects how TACL interprets
the characters. This sends square brackets to TEDIT:
56> TEDIT critique; SEARCH [sic]
If the command is part of an IN file and #INFORMAT is set to TACL (or QUOTED),
TACL tries to invoke SIC, considering it to be a variable, and displays an error
message. If you change the command to
57> TEDIT critique; SEARCH ~[sic~]