One of the most powerful features of the CopiaFacts syntax is the ability to expand "variables", or "macros", to change the effects of commands and templates at run-time. You should use the following conventions for variable names:
•Variable names should be alphanumeric and not more than 32 characters in length. Longer names are supported but no indication is given if they need to be truncated.
•Upper-case variable names are recommended. To make all comparisons case-blind, lower-case names (for locale languages whose characters have two cases) are stored internally as upper-case, so when FS files are written out from COPIAFACTS, lower-case names may be converted to upper case.
•Spaces in variable names are supported but not recommended. When used in a definition or assignment, double-quotes should surround the name, and variables with embedded spaces should not be used inside a phrase to be expanded.
•Non-ASCII characters in variable names are supported but not recommended. The correct alphabetic sorting sequence, for example for variables written into a SENT FS file, may not be maintained.
The maximum length of the value of a variable is approximately 8000 characters. There is a limit of 4 megabytes for the aggregate size of values assigned to user variables in a single call or script sequence. Even very complex scripts should not approach this limit. A run-time error 4038 will be reported and will terminate the call if the limit would be exceeded.
Essential features of the uses of variables are described in the following sections
Precedence of variable expansion
See also Appendix D, which documents all variable names known to the system.
