Overview

All of these new subroutines are defined in the (---) application and begin with a period (.). They all use a standard call interface and use the same framework for returning results and reporting errors. They are grouped by name prefix so that related subroutines are grouped together by function. Data is passed into and returned from these subroutines by use of the PASS statement. Failure information is returned by use of a work field with the same name as the subroutine. This failure code field is tokenized so you can scan to see the failure reasons that can be returned. Note that the work field has a scope of 'Detached', and so will retain it's value from invocation to invocation, as well as across all invocation types.

If the subroutine accepts parameters (i.e., READ, WRITE, APPEND to --- .STREAM OPEN), the parameters are case insensitive.

If the subroutine has required parameters and you do not PASS the correct number of parameters, the subroutine will issue a CANCEL identifying which parameter was missing.