Special character use

Special characters can be used only in these special ways or inside quoted character strings or comments.

The special EBCDIC characters are used by the CL in various ways. They are most frequently used as delimiters and as symbolic operators in expressions. The special characters, as shown in the following table, have assigned meanings when coded in control language commands:

Table 1. Delimiters
Name	Symbol	Meanings
Apostrophe	' '	Single apostrophe delimiters indicate the beginning and end of a quoted character string (a constant).
Begin and end comment	/* */	Indicates the beginning and end of a comment.
Blank	^b ¹	Basic delimiter for separating parts of a command (label, command name, and its parameters), and for separating values inside lists.
Colon	:	Ending delimiter for command labels. Separates parts of time values. ³
Comma	,	In many countries, used as decimal point in numeric values. Separates parts of date values. ²
Left and right parentheses	( )	Grouping delimiter for lists and parameter values, and for evaluating the order of expressions.
Period	.	Decimal point. Used to separate the name and extension of a document and folder name and to separate the parts of date values. ²
Quote	" "	Start of a quoted object name.
Slash	/	Connects parts of qualified names or path names.
Slashes	//	Identifying characters used in positions 1 and 2 of BCHJOB, ENDBCHJOB, and DATA commands in the job stream. Also, used as a default delimiter on inline data files.
Note: Because this character does not resolve in the online version of this book, ^b is used to represent a blank space only when the character cannot be clearly explained in another manner. Valid only when the job date separator value specifies the same character. Valid only when the job time separator value specifies the same character.