OPTIONS


>>-OPTIONS--expression;----------------------------------------><

OPTIONS passes special requests or parameters to the language processor. For example, these may be language processor options or perhaps define a special character set.

The expression is evaluated, and the result is examined one word at a time. The language processor converts the words to uppercase. If the language processor recognizes the words, then they are obeyed. Words that are not recognized are ignored and assumed to be instructions to a different processor.

The language processor recognizes the following words:

ETMODE: specifies that literal strings and symbols and comments containing DBCS characters are checked for being valid DBCS strings. If you use this option, it must be the first instruction of the program.
If the expression is an external function call, for example OPTIONS 'GETETMOD'(), and the program contains DBCS literal strings, enclose the name of the function in quotation marks to ensure that the entire program is not scanned before the option takes effect. It is not suggested to use internal function calls to set ETMODE because of the possibility of errors in interpreting DBCS literal strings in the program.
NOETMODE: specifies that literal strings and symbols and comments containing DBCS characters are not checked for being valid DBCS strings. NOETMODE is the default. The language processor ignores this option unless it is the first instruction in a program.
EXMODE: specifies that instructions, operators, and functions handle DBCS data in mixed strings on a logical character basis. DBCS data integrity is maintained.
NOEXMODE: specifies that any data in strings is handled on a byte basis. The integrity of DBCS characters, if any, may be lost. NOEXMODE is the default.

Note:

Because of the language processor's scanning procedures, you must place an OPTIONS 'ETMODE' instruction as the first instruction in a program containing DBCS characters in literal strings, symbols, or comments. If you do not place OPTIONS 'ETMODE' as the first instruction and you use it later in the program, you receive error message IRX0033I. If you do place it as the first instruction of your program, all subsequent uses are ignored. If the expression contains anything that would start a label search, all clauses tokenized during the label search process are tokenized within the current setting of ETMODE. Therefore, if this is the first statement in the program, the default is NOETMODE.
To ensure proper scanning of a program containing DBCS literals and DBCS comments, enter the words ETMODE, NOETMODE, EXMODE, and NOEXMODE as literal strings (that is, enclosed in quotation marks) in the OPTIONS instruction.
The EXMODE setting is saved and restored across subroutine and function calls.
To distinguish DBCS characters from 1-byte EBCDIC characters, sequences of DBCS characters are enclosed with a shift-out (SO) character and a shift-in (SI) character. The hexadecimal values of the SO and SI characters are X'0E' and X'0F', respectively.
When you specify OPTIONS 'ETMODE', DBCS characters within a literal string are excluded from the search for a closing quotation mark in literal strings.
The words ETMODE, NOETMODE, EXMODE, and NOEXMODE can appear several times within the result. The one that takes effect is determined by the last valid one specified between the pairs ETMODE-NOETMODE and EXMODE-NOEXMODE.