John, thanks for the quick reply.
I daresay - even if it has alswyas been that way, it still feels counter-intuitive to me. Of course, that is not really an argument. And really, the difference in handling either quotes or ampersands makes it only worse. I will accept that this is the way the HLASM behaves. Just like I accept various habits of my beloved ones, which I do not deign to even begin to understand... ;-) To me, the main remaining question is: why? Why does the HLASM display this specific behaviour? How did this come to pass? If you know the background of this peculiar behaviour, would you please tell me some more about the background? Thanks in advance, Abe Kornelis. ========= ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Ehrman" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 8:53 PM Subject: Re: Evaluation of Count attribute for SETC variables I must admit that I find it counter-intuitive that HLASM would store the double ampersands in the variable, rather than undouble them during the assignment. But well - as long as the results are consistent - I really shouldn't need to care. As far as I know, it's always been that way. Sometimes such difficulties are due to the fact that SETC expressions involving paired ampersands result in two ampersands -- they aren't paired, while apostrophes are. That is, &X SETC '&&''' is three characters long, not two.
