Programming Guide - Actian

VariablesHow You Can Declare Simple VariablesThe syntax for declaring a simple variable is:name = datatype [with null|not null] [not default|with default|[with] defaultdefaultvalue]The following example shows a local variable declaration for an integervariable:i = integer;By default, all simple variables are nullable. If you do not want the variable tobe nullable, you must include the not null clause in the declaration, forexample:i = integer not null;By default, all numeric simple variables are assigned a default value of zero,and all character simple variables are assigned a default value of the emptystring (''). If you want to specify a different default value, you must include thedefault clause. The default value must be null, a literal, or one of the systemconstants defined in the Language Reference Guide online help, for example:i = integer not null default false;How You Can Reference Simple VariablesThe with null, not default, and with default (without a value) clauses areprovided for syntactic compatibility with SQL, but they have no effect inOpenROAD.To reference a simple variable, use the variable name. For example, to assignthe value of Smith to the person variable, use the following statement:person = 'Smith';Individual elements in a reference variable or an array can be simple variables,as shown in the illustration in Variables (see page 25). In this illustration, Filmis a reference variable with three attributes. Each of these attributes is asimple variable. Similarly, Movies is an array and each individual element inthe array is a simple variable.In a 4GL script, you can use simple variables as reference or array variableelements in any context that you can use other simple variables, for example:film.director = 'Hitchcock';if movies[].title = 'ANNIE HALL' then ...Language Elements 27