Binder syntax conventions

Each binder control statement specifies an operation and one or more operands. Nothing must be written preceding the operation, which must begin in or after column 2. The operation must be separated from the operand by one or more blanks; blanks cannot be embedded within the operand field (see Rules for comments).

Control statements are specified in 80-byte lines. A control statement can be continued on as many lines as necessary. However, the control statement keyword must be entirely on the first line and the operands must begin on the first line. A control statement can be continued in one of the following ways:

Terminate an operand at a comma followed by a blank. The comma must be in column 71 or earlier. Continuation lines can begin anywhere after column 1. Any leading blanks are discarded.
If the operand field goes to column 71 (with no embedded blanks) and column 72 is nonblank, the next line is treated as a continuation line. As in 1, the continuation line can begin anywhere after column 1 and any leading blanks are discarded. Columns 73 through 80 of each line are reserved for sequence numbers, which are not processed by the binder.
An operand enclosed in single quotation marks can be continued. The binder searches as many records as necessary until it finds the ending quotation mark. The full operand is reconstructed by concatenating the fragments starting with column 2 of each line. In this case, the continuation of the operand must start in column 2, or the operand is considered to have embedded blanks and is truncated at the first blank. You can continue coding additional operands as usual following the ending quotation mark. An example of this is:
```
123456789.123456789.123456789.123456789.123456789.123456789.123456789.12
 INCLUDE '/this/is/a/very/long/path/that/needs/to/be/split/across/two/l-
 ines/input.o','./and/a/second/path/private.o' 
```

Most binder control statements require various symbols or names to be specified as operands. Unless otherwise noted, all such names and symbols must be 32767 bytes or less and consist of EBCDIC characters within the range of X'41' through X'FE' plus the double-byte character set (DBCS) SO/SI control characters X'0E' and X'0F'. It is strongly recommended that all such names consist of displayable characters only and that they are enclosed by single quotation marks if they contain other than upper case alphanumeric characters. DDnames, member names, and alias names must conform to the JCL coding rules for those parameters.

You can enclose any symbol except binder-defined keywords with single quotation marks. If you want to use commas or parentheses in a symbol in a control statement, you must enclose that symbol in single quotation marks. A single quotation mark embedded in a quoted string must be coded as two consecutive quotation marks. Only complete symbols can be enclosed in single quotation marks. Characters within quoted strings will not be folded to upper case, regardless of the value of the CASE option. A quoted string with no closing quotation mark continues in column 2 of the next line.

A number of metasymbols dealing with names and program symbols have been used in the control statement syntax diagrams in this topic. These metasymbols include the following:

symbol, newsymbol. A user-assigned name with a maximum length of 32767 bytes and consist only of characters from the binder's character set, described above.
externalsymbol, external reference. Those symbols that are or will be defined in the External Symbol Dictionary (ESD). These include entry names defined by a Label Definition (LD), section names that are implied entry names, external references (ER) and part references (PR), which are for part names or pseudoregister (external dummy section) names.
sectionname. Those symbols which name sections in the module. Section is a generic term encompassing control sections, private code sections and common areas. Blank common and private code sections cannot be named on binder control statements.
directoryname. Those symbols that appear or will appear in the directory of a named library structure. Directory names include member names, aliases and unqualified z/OS UNIX file names, and have length restrictions imposed by the underlying file system.
File system Member name Alias name
PDS Library 8 8
PDSE Library 8 1024
z/OS UNIX Directory 255 255
ddname. The name coded in the label field of a dd-statement. Ddnames are limited to eight bytes.
pathname. A z/OS® UNIX pathname designating either a directory or a regular file (depending on the control statement). It must begin with either "./" (meaning a relative pathname) or "/" (meaning an absolute path name) and is limited to 1023 bytes in length. To prevent the pathname from being folded to uppercase, you should either enclose the pathname in single quotation marks or specify the binder CASE=MIXED option. z/OS pathnames are replaced in the binder listing output by generated "ddnames" of the form "/nnnnnnn", where nnnnnnn is numeric. The true pathname may be found in the DDname vs Pathname report.

You can include blank lines between control statements but not within a statement. A blank line indicates an end to any statement.