HLASM Language Reference

Extended SET Statements
Optionally, you can place a period between the closing parenthesis of a substring
notation and the opening single quotation mark of the next item in the operand
field.
If &ALPHA has been assigned the character value AB%4, and &ABC has been assigned
the character value 5RS, either of the following statements can be used to assign
&WORD the character value AB%45RS.
&WORD SETC '&ALPHA'(1,4).'&ABC'
&WORD SETC '&ALPHA'(1,4)'&ABC'(1,3)
If a SETC symbol is used in the operand field of a SETA instruction, the character
value assigned to the SETC symbol must be 1-to-10 decimal digits (not greater
than 2147483647), or a valid self-defining term.
If a SETA symbol is used in the operand field of a SETC statement, the arithmetic
value is converted to an unsigned integer with leading zeros removed. If the value
is 0, it is converted to a single 0.
Extended SET Statements
As well as assigning single values to SET symbols, you can assign values to
multiple elements in an array of a subscripted SET symbol with one single SETx
instruction. Such an instruction is called an extended SET statement.
┌─,───────┐
►►──variable_symbol(subscript)
──┬─SETA─┬─── ▼ ─operand─┴──────────────►◄
├─SETB─┤
└─SETC─┘
variable_symbol(subscript)
is a variable symbol and a subscript that shows the position in the SET symbol
array to which the first operand is to be assigned.
operand
is the arithmetic value, binary value, or character value to be assigned to the
corresponding SET symbol array element.
The first operand is assigned to the SET symbol denoted by
variable_symbol(subscript). Successive operands are then assigned to successive
positions in the SET symbol array. If an operand is omitted, the corresponding
element of the array is unchanged. Consider the following example:
LCLA
&LIST(5)
&LIST(3) SETA
5,1,,2,25,3
The first instruction declares &LIST as a subscripted local SETA symbol. The
second instruction assigns values to certain elements of the array &LIST. Thus, the
instruction does the same as the following sequence:
&LIST(3) SETA 5
&LIST(4) SETA
1
&LIST(6) SETA
2
&LIST(7) SETA 25
&LIST(8) SETA
3
Chapter 9. How to Write Conditional Assembly Instructions 387