Syntax requirements for command and subcommand names

If you write your own Command Processor, and you intend to use the Command Scan Service Routine to check for a valid subcommand name, the name you choose must meet the following syntax requirements:

The first character must be alphabetic or one of the special characters $, #, @.
The remaining characters must be alphanumeric.
The length of the subcommand name must not exceed eight characters.
The command delimiter must be a separator character.

Include one or more numerals in the name to differentiate it from the IBM-supplied command names, which do not include numerals.

The Command Scan Service Routine accepts double-byte character set (DBCS) strings in addition to EBCDIC character strings. The shift-out character (X'0E') indicates a change from EBCDIC to DBCS; the shift-in character (X'0F') indicates the reverse. Each double-byte character requires a double-byte representation so that valid DBCS strings contain an even number of bytes. With the exception of blank, which is X'4040', each byte has a value from X'41' to X'FE'.

Double-byte characters can appear in comments and certain types of strings of user data. For a discussion of the types of strings that can contain double-byte characters, see Verifying command and subcommand operands with parse.

The following table shows the various character types recognized by the Command Scan Service Routine. Unless otherwise indicated, alphanumeric characters are (1) alphabetic (A-Z), (2) numeric (0-9), and (3) the special characters $, #, @.

Table 1. Character types recognized by the parse service routine
		Separator	$ # @	Alphabetic	Numeric	Command delimiter	Delimiter	Special
Comment	/*	X
Horizontal Tab	HT	X				X
Blank	b	X				X
Comma	,	X				X
Dollar Sign	$		X
Number Sign	#		X
At Sign	@ a-z A-Z 0-9		X	X X	X
New line	NL					X	X
Period	.					X		X
Left parenthesis	(					X	X
Right parenthesis	)					X	X
Ampersand	&					X		X
Asterisk	*							X
Semicolon	;					X	X
Minus sign, hyphen	-					X		X
Slash	/					X	X
Apostrophe	‘					X	X
Equal sign	=					X	X
Cent sign	c							X
Less than	<							X
Greater than	>							X
Plus sign	+							X
Logical OR	\|							X
Exclamation point	!							X
Logical NOT	¬							X
Percent sign	%							X
Dash	-							X
Question mark	?							X
Colon	:							X
Quotation Mark	"							X
Shift-out¹	X'0E'							X
Shift-in¹	X'0F'							X
¹ The shift-out and shift-in characters indicate the beginning and end of a string of double-byte character set data.