Assigning Strings with Semi-Colons in Paragraphs

[Tom Pellitieri]

I'm using SB+ 5.4.3.  In /PD.P, I tried to enter the following two lines:

LOCAL TMP
TMP = "X;Y"

When I press F2 to save, I get an error "Line 2 - Error in Expression".

If I removed the semi-colon, it's fine.

Any ideas??? 

I'm actually trying to set @PARAM before a call to SB.EVAL.EXP to get the text from a Code Table (/TABLE.DEFN).  Alternatively, is there an easier way to do this from a paragraph?

--Tom

[precisonline]

The SB+ paragraph parser thinks a semicolon can only be a statement terminator and therefore it cannot appear in a quoted string.  The semicolon character is a ASCII 59 (as I recall) so you can either concatenate a CHAR(59) where you want the semicolon to be, or you can create a global equate called SEMICOLON or SEMI that equates to CHAR(59) and use that name instead (which I think is more readable).

[Tom Pellitieri]

Thanks, Kevin.  I don't use the semi-colon/statement separator much.  I just found it odd that the parser would give that precedence over string completion.

[precisonline]

Very few actually use the string separator.  But the problem is deeper than the paragraph language; it's actually in the underlying expression language.  For example, this is invalid in a SB+ expression:

SEQ(';')

It's perfectly valid in BASIC, however. The semicolon just messes stuff up.

My apologies, I remember now it's not because of the statement separator, it's because of the way that SB+ creates execution stacks from this stuff.  The semicolon is the delimiter both for expressions and paragraph p-code.  For example, here's the execution stack for SEQ('A'):

CA;Z|Q

Note the ";" between the "constant A" and "function Q".