About this task
A variable is a character or group of characters representing a
value. A variable can contain either single- or double-byte characters
or both. (Double-byte characters are valid only if OPTIONS ETMODE
is the first instruction of your
program.) The following variable
big represents
the value one million or 1,000,000.
big = 1000000
Variables can refer to different values at different times. If
you assign a different value to
big, it gets the value of
the new assignment, until it is changed again.
big = 999999999
Variables can also represent a value that is unknown when the
program is
written. In the following example, the user's name is unknown, so
it is represented by the variable
who.
/* Gets name from current input stream */
PARSE PULL who /* and puts it in variable "who" */