Using continuation characters to enter long commands

Continuation characters are useful when you want to process a command that is longer than your screen or window width. You can use continuation characters in the interactive mode of the administrative client.

About this task

Without continuation characters, you can enter up to 256 characters. With continuation characters, you can enter up to 1500 characters.

Note: In the MACRO command, the maximums apply after any substitution variables have been applied.

With continuation characters, you can do the following:

Enter a dash at the end of the line you want to continue.
For example:
```
register admin pease mypasswd -
contact="david, ext1234"
```
Continue a list of values by entering a dash or a back slash, with no preceding blank spaces, after the last comma of the list that you enter on the first line. Then, enter the remaining items in the list on the next line with no preceding blank spaces. For example:
```
stgpools=stg1,stg2,stg3,-
stg4,stg5,stg6
```
Continue a string of values that are enclosed in quotation marks by entering the first part of the string that is enclosed in quotation marks, followed by a dash or a back slash at the end of the line. Then, enter the remainder of the string on the next line, enclosed in the same type of quotation marks.
For example:
```
contact="david pease, bldg. 100, room 2b, san jose,"-
"ext. 1234, alternate contact-norm pass,ext 2345"
```
IBM Spectrum® Protect concatenates the two strings with no intervening blanks. You must use only this method to continue a quoted string of values across more than one line.