I'm looking at the C2B built-in function. When invoking it with ampersand or
apostrophe, two ampersands or two apostrophes must be used as the argument.
Here is a short test program that illustrates this.
TESTC2B CSECT
&C2B SETC C2B('&&') error if only 1; returns 2
MNOTE 'C2B(''&&&&'')=&C2B'
AIF ('&C2B' NE '0101000001010000').C2ERR
&C2B SETC C2B('''') error if only 1; returns 1
MNOTE 'C2B('''''''')=&C2B'
AIF ('&C2B' NE '01111101').C2ERR
MNOTE 'All tests successful'
AGO .EXIT
.C2ERR ANOP
MNOTE 12,'C2 OPERATOR ERROR'
AGO .EXIT
.EXIT ANOP
*
END
Assembling this with HLASM results in the "All tests successful" MNOTE.
However, the returned C2B value for ampersand is the binary value for two
ampersands. This surprised me. The returned C2B value for apostrophe is the
binary value for one apostrophe, as expected. Can anyone explain why the
ampersand value is different?
Snippet from HLASM output.
1 TESTC2B CSECT
2 &C2B SETC C2B('&&') error if only 1; returns 2
3 MNOTE 'C2B(''&&&&'')=&C2B'
+C2B('&&')=0101000001010000
4 AIF ('&C2B' NE '0101000001010000').C2ERR
5 &C2B SETC C2B('''') error if only 1; returns 1
6 MNOTE 'C2B('''''''')=&C2B'
+C2B('''')=01111101
7 AIF ('&C2B' NE '01111101').C2ERR
8 All tests successful
9 AGO .EXIT
10 .EXIT ANOP
11 *
12 END
Regards, John Ganci
