SIMSCRIPT II.5 Programming Language

Programming Language Concepts
which reads a variable length text string enclosed by matched delimiters. This form of the read
statement skips to the next nonblank character in the input data, treating this character as a leading
delimiter, and then reads until the next occurrence of this same character. The character string may
begin in any record column position and extend over any number of input records. Any nonblank
character may serve as a delimiter for any individual read. For example, the statement:
read TVAR1, TVAR2 as 2 T *
when reading the following data record:
column number
0 1 2 3 4...
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890...
/A simple phrase/ 'Two words'
is equivalent to:
and
let TVAR1 = "A simple phrase"
let TVAR2 = "Two words"
A text variable may be included in the variable list of a print statement. The print format information
should contain a field of asterisks denoting the positions to be occupied in the printed
line. If the text string to be printed contains more characters than there are allocated print positions,
only the indicated number of characters will appear in the output. Conversely, if more positions are
allocated than there are characters, the unfilled positions will appear as blanks. Thus, the statement:
print 1 line with TVAR1, TVAR2 thus
**************** ********
produces the result:
ANTIDISESTABLISH
IS
A technique for producing variable-length string output is described in Chapter 3.
2.21 Operations With Text Variables
Although arithmetic operators cannot operate on text mode variables, certain logical expressions
can use text variables. The most usual of these is comparison for equality; thus:
if NAME = "LEWIS CARROLL"
Such comparisons between text variables or literals are treated on a character-by-character basis,
starting from the first character position and proceeding left to right. If two text strings differ in
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