You're right, you can use STRING.  But it's less efficient than MOVE, and
doesn't clear the rest of the buffer.  So you gotta MOVE SPACES first,
then STRING.  I like to use STRING when it's more appropriate, such as
when building the file equation of this topic.

When calling the COMMAND intrinsic (any variant) you need a terminating
CR, which I believe actually gets handed off to the CI itself, which
expects it (the CI also does the terminal io normally associated with
typing commands, I believe).  The trailing blanks are never (?) a
problem; too short of a buffer IS!  The entire string (including the CR)
may not exceed 256 bytes.

Most intrinsics do not need any terminator, they're fixed calls.

But we digress.  Suffice it to say, setting & reading variables is far
cleaner (and more portable, too) than digging the value out of a file
equation.

K Tracy Pierce
Systems Programmer
Golden Gate Bridge Highway & Transportation District
San Francisco, CA  94129-0601

>Tracy,
>
>An easy way to generate MPE command strings is using the STRING verb.
>
>77 buffer pic x(128).
>
>string "LISTEQ > MPEMSGS", %15 delimited size into buffer.
>call intrinsic "hpcicommand" using buffer, ...
>
>This way I can use just one general buffer variable for many things.
>Also, some commands seem not to like the trailing spaces with the fixed
><CR>, but I'm not sure.

>John Zoltak
>North American Mfg Co
>Cleveland Ohio