Coding restrictions

The following rules apply to control statement preparation:

Operation definers and operands must be in uppercase EBCDIC.
Column 1 of each control statement can be used only for a label or for a comment statement that begins with an asterisk in column 1.
If present, a label must begin in column 1. Labels are allowed only in the SYSIN and SORTCNTL data sets.
The entire operation definer must be contained on the first line of a control statement.
The first operand must begin on the first line of a control statement. The last operand in a statement must be followed by at least one blank.
Blanks are not allowed in operands. Anything following a blank is considered part of the remark field.
Remarks are allowed only in the DFSPARM, SYSIN, and SORTCNTL data sets.
Commas, semicolons, and blanks can be used only as delimiters. They can be used in values only if the values are constants.
Each type of program control statement can appear only once within a single source (for example, the SYSIN data set).