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General Command Rules

1977 Version of ANSI Standard

3.5 General command Rules

Every command starts with a "command word" which dictates the syntax and interpretation of that command instance. The standard contains the following command words.

B[REAK]
C[LOSE]
D[O]
E[LSE]
F[OR]
G[OTO]
H[ALT]
H[ANG]
I[F]
K[ILL]
L[OCK]
O[PEN]
Q[UIT]
R[EAD]
S[ET]
U[SE]
V[IEW]
W[RITE]
X[ECUTE]
Z[unspecified]

Unused initial letters of command words are reserved for future enhancement of the standard.

The formal definition of the syntax of command is a choice from among all of the individual command syntax definitions of 3.6.

    command::=



syntax of the BREAK command
syntax of the CLOSE command
...
syntax of the XECUTE command




See also the transition diagram for command.

Any implementation of the language must be able to recognize both the initial letter abbreviation and the full spelling of each command word. When two command words have a common initial letter, their argument syntaxes uniquely distinguish them.

For all commands allowing multiple arguments, the form

command word arg1, arg2 ...

is equivalent in execution to

command word arg1 command word arg2 ...

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Copyright © Standard Documents; 1977-2024 MUMPS Development Committee;
Copyright © Examples: 1995-2024 Ed de Moel;
Copyright © Annotations: 2003-2008 Jacquard Systems Research
Copyright © Annotations: 2008-2024 Ed de Moel.

This page most recently updated on 12-Sep-2014, 12:14:01.

For comments, contact Ed de Moel (demoel@jacquardsystems.com)