The IBM HLASM supports a builtin function called BYTE that permits an arbitrary character to be defined and introduced into assembled text. It is 'generic' so that, for example
|&nul setc BYTE(0) --nul character, x'00' |&nul setc BYTE(x'00') --nul character are equivalent/interchangeable in use. For my own purposes I have implemented three other BIFs, o BYTES2, o BYTES3, and o BYTESM for defining two-, three- and multiple-byte 'characters'. They too are 'generic' in the sense that they accept both binary-arithmetic and hexadecimal-string arguments. I also prefer to use 'µ', 'µµ', 'µµµ', or 'µµ...µ', one or more instances of the Greek minuscule, to display the positions of such characters. It is widely available (for use in such constructs as µsec) but even less used than '¬' or '»'. (Doing so of course brings in train a local requirement to write, say, 'microsec' instead of 'µsec'; but I have not found this onerous.) John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
