1.3.4.2 Continuation Lines
Any sentence, entry, clause, or phrase that requires more than one line can be continued in Area B of the next line that is neither a comment line nor a blank line. The line being continued is a continued line; the succeeding lines are continuation lines. Area A of a continuation line must be blank.
If there is no hyphen (-) in the indicator area (column 7) of a line, the last character of the preceding line is assumed to be followed by a space.
X DBCS literals and user-defined words containing multi-byte characters
X cannot be continued.
X Both characters making up the opening delimiter must be on the same line
X for the:
- X Hexadecimal notation of a nonnumeric literal (X" or X')
- X Hexadecimal notation of a null-terminated nonnumeric literal (Z" or
X Z')
If the continued line contains a nonnumeric literal without a closing quotation mark, all spaces at the end of the continued line (through column 72) are considered to be part of the literal. The continuation line must contain a hyphen in the indicator area, and the first nonblank character must be a quotation mark. The continuation of the literal begins with the character immediately following the quotation mark.
If the last character on the continued line of a nonnumeric literal is a single quotation mark in column 72, the continuation line must start with two consecutive quotation marks. This will result in a single quotation mark as part of the value of the nonnumeric literal.
X If the last character on the continued line of a nonnumeric literal is a
X single quotation mark in Area B, the continuation line may start with a
X single quotation mark. This will result in two consecutive nonnumeric
X literals instead of one continued nonnumeric literal.
Both characters making up the pseudo-text delimiter separator "==" must be on the same line.
To continue a literal such that the continued lines and the continuation lines are part of one literal:
- Code a hyphen in the indicator area of each continuation line.
- Do not terminate the continued lines with a single quotation mark
followed by a space.
- Code the literal value using all columns of the continued lines, up to
and including column 72.
- Code a quotation mark before the first character of the literal on
each continuation line.
- Terminate the last continuation line with a single quotation mark
followed by a space.
- Literal 000001 is interpreted as one literal that is 120 bytes long.
Each character between the starting quotation mark and up to and
including column 72 of continued lines are counted as part of the
literal.
- Literal 000005 is interpreted as one literal that is 140 bytes long.
The blanks at the end of each continued line are counted as part of
the literal because the continued lines do not end with a quotation
mark.
- Literal 000010 is interpreted as three separate literals, each having
a length of 50, 50, and 20, respectively. The quotation mark with the
following space terminates the continued line. Only the characters
within the quotation marks are counted as part of the literals.
Literal 000010 is not valid as a VALUE clause literal for non-level 88
data items.
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