ICTL instruction

The ICTL instruction changes the begin, end, and continue columns that establish the coding format of the assembler language source statements.


>>-ICTL--begin--+--------------------+-------------------------><
                '-,end-+-----------+-'   
                       '-,continue-'

begin: Specifies the begin column of the source statement. It must be a decimal self-defining term with value 1 - 40.
end: Specifies the end column of the source statement. When end is specified it must be a decimal self-defining term with 41 - 80. It must be not less than begin +5, and must be greater than continue. If end is not specified, it is assumed to be 71.
continue: Specifies the continue column of the source statement. When specified, continue must be a decimal self-defining term within the range of 2 to 40, and it must be greater than begin. If continue is not specified, or if column 80 is specified as the end column, the assembler assumes that continuation lines are not allowed.
Default: 1,71,16

Use the ICTL instruction only once, at the beginning of a source program. If no ICTL statement is used in the source program, the assembler assumes that 1, 71, and 16 are the begin, end, and continue columns.

With the ICTL instruction, you can, for example, increase the number of columns to be used for the identification or sequence checking of your source statements. By changing the begin column, you can even create a field before the begin column to contain identification or sequence numbers. For example, the following instruction designates the begin column as 9 and the end column as 80. Since the end column is specified as 80, no continuation records are recognized.

         ICTL            9,80

COPY Instruction: The ICTL instruction does not affect the format of statements brought in by a COPY instruction or generated from a library macro definition. The assembler processes these statements according to the standard begin, end, and continue columns described in Field boundaries.