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An ampersand character (&
) at the beginning of an expression substitutes the value of the expression for the expression itself in a statement.When you use an ampersand with a QDR, you must enclose the whole expression in parentheses when you want the variable to be qualified before the substitution is made.
Suppose you have a text variable named myvar
that is dimensioned by reptype
and that contains the names of variables. Remember that it is myvar
that is dimensioned by reptype
, not the variables named by myvar
. Therefore, you must use parentheses so that myvar
is qualified and the resulting value is used in a REPORT statement.
REPORT &(myvar(reptype 'actual'))
When you do not use parentheses and the variable that is specified in myvar
is sales
, then you get an error message that sales
is not dimensioned by reptype
.