HP 3000 Manuals

COMMUNICATOR 3000/XL

Change to the MPE Command Interpreter 

by Paul P. Lee--Information Technology Group 

With the A.01.10 release of MPE XL, a change has been made to the MPE
Command Interpreter (CI).

Prior to this release, the CI replaces the ampersand continuation
character "&" in a multiline CI input, with one or two blanks depending
on the ampersand's byte boundary in the command buffer.  On an odd byte
boundary, it is replaced by one blank.  On an even byte boundary, it is
replaced by two blanks.  The extra blanks are treated as regular
characters in the command buffer.  In addition, the leading blanks from
the continuation lines are trimmed.

Starting with this release, the CI is changed to treat the ampersand "&"
only as a notation for a continuation line, and the "&" is no longer
replaced by blanks.  If blanks are needed (e.g.  as delimiters), they can
be placed either before the "&" on the current line or in the beginning
of the next (continuation) line followed by any nonblank character(s).
The leading blanks are not trimmed from continuation lines in a multiline
CI input.

The purpose of the change is to provide a higher flexibility to the CI.
You can benefit from the change in the following two areas:

 *  The change allows you to place the "&" anywhere in a line as the last
    nonblank character.  This means that you can even place it in the
    middle of a word.  A command name, keyword, or parameter can now span
    more than one line.  In the past, the "&" was restricted to be placed
    only where a delimiter is legal and was not allowed in the middle of
    a word.

 *  The multiline INFO string passed to the :RUN command is no longer
    altered.  The ampersands do not cause blanks to be inserted into the
    INFO string; nor existing blanks are removed.

For those who use the ampersands as delimiters in their UDCs and job
streams, appropriate modification may be needed as shown below.

For example, the following CI input, which works with the previous
releases of MPE, would return an error "UNKNOWN COMMAND NAME. (CIERR
975)".

          :LISTF&
          :fileset

It should be changed to either:

          :LISTF &
          :fileset

or:

          :LISTF&
          : fileset

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