SCLM can be tailored to support languages other than those listed in the examples provided with the product. By creating a language definition as part of the project definition, you specify to SCLM the languages that will be used for the project. Language definitions provide SCLM with language-specific control information such as the language name and the definition of the language translators.

The language definition describes language-specific processing in two ways:

• From a data-flow perspective, the language definition specifies all data sets used as input to or output from various SCLM processes such as Parse, Build, Promote, and Delete.
• From a procedural perspective, the language definition specifies the translators (for example, parsers or compilers) that are invoked to process your SCLM-controlled data. The order in which those translators are invoked and the options to be passed to the translators are defined in the language definition.

You must provide SCLM a language definition for each language (PL/I, COBOL, Link-Edit, and so on) that you want SCLM to support. In most cases, you can make minor changes to sample SCLM language definitions provided with ISPF.

A language definition consists of a collection of the following definitions:

• System library definitions
• Language identifier definition
• Include set definitions
• Translator definitions
• Allocation definitions
• Copy library definitions

Because a macro exists for each of these definitions and because each macro accepts a number of different parameters, you can specify a large variety of language definitions. The language definitions provided with the product are examples that can serve as a reference in the construction of language definitions for a specific application and environment.

To determine what modifications you can make to the language definition, become familiar with the parameters of the language definition macros as documented in SCLM macros. Typically, to write a new language definition, you would copy an old language definition and then modify it to meet your specific needs.