Attribute references

Data such as instructions, constants, and areas have characteristics called data attributes. The assembler assigns attribute values to the ordinary symbols and variable symbols that represent the data.

You can determine up to eight attributes of symbols you define in your program by means of an attribute reference. By testing attributes in conditional assembly instructions, you can control the conditional assembly logic.

Attributes of symbols produced by macro generation or substitution in open code are available immediately after the referenced statement is generated.

Table 1 shows the data attributes.

Table 1. Data attributes
Attribute	Purpose	Notation
Type	Gives a letter that identifies the type of data represented by an ordinary symbol, a macro instruction operand, a SET symbol, and a literal	`T'`
Length	Gives the number of bytes occupied by the data that is named by the symbol, or literal, specified in the attribute reference	`L'`
Scaling	Refers to the position of the decimal point in decimal, fixed-point, and floating-point constants	`S'`
Integer	Is a function of the length and scaling attributes of decimal, fixed-point, and floating-point constants	`I'`
Count	Gives the number of characters that would be required to represent the current value of the SET symbol or the system variable symbol. It also gives the number of characters that constitute the macro operand instruction.	`K'`
Number	Gives the number of sublist entries in a macro instruction operand sublist	`N'`
Defined	Indicates whether the symbol referenced has been defined prior to the attribute reference	`D'`
Operation Code	Indicates whether a given operation code has been defined prior to the attribute reference	`O'`