Ampersands and apostrophes

[mlopez01]

Hello.

When did apostrophes become optional (line 5), and how can the following code compile when the ampersand is missing on line 7? This compiles and the expression at line 7 evaluates to false at runtime:

0001.00 pgm
0002.00
0003.00 dcl &text *char len(10)
0004.00
0005.00 chgvar &text value(ABC)
0006.00
0007.00 if (text *eq 'ABC') then(sndmsg msg('TEST') tousr(MIKE))
0008.00
0009.00 endpgm​

Thanks in advance,

Mike

[john.sev99]

I've seen this in very old programs so it seems quotes haven't been required for a while, though if you had a space or hyphen or something odd in there the quotes would be required. I believe the non-quoted text will be automatically capitalised as well. I've always avoided it because it can be confusing. It's no different to entering character strings in a command I guess, you don't need to quote those unless there's a space or something odd in there.
Line 7 is basically comparing 2 character strings - if ('TEXT' *eq 'ABC'), which of course it doesn't.

[Peder Udesen]

It has always been like this.

[Vectorspace]

CL is literally a list of commands, every instruction in a CL program is a CMD. And command syntax has always allowed, for text type parameters (not name type params) a string of characters that starts with a letter and contains no spaces to be treated as such with no apostrophes.
e.g.

WRKMBRPDM FILE(QRPGLESRC) MBRTYPE(SQLRPGLE)
/* is the same as*/
WRKMBRPDM FILE(QRPGLESRC) MBRTYPE('SQLRPGLE')​