I know that this keeps cropping up, but I can't for the life of me remember
the effective way to do this.

I'm processing some files containg JCL (with the ! in column 1), and I need
to parse out and modify the !JOB line. How can I get the CI to ignore the !
that immediately precedes the JOB, but still regard the entire line as a
single variable?

The snippet in question reads something like this:

While not __jobcardfound and finfo("jobtemp","eof")>0 do
      input __jobcard<jobtemp
      setvar __jobcard rtrim("!__jobcard")
      if  pos("JOB","ups("!__jobcard")>0 then
          echo JOB card found
          echo !__jobcard

<deletia>

The problem is that the contents of __jobcard are
!JOB MYJOB, etc

and when I try and echo the variable __jobcard, it tries to evaluate the
!JOB part and (understandably) complains! (no dereferencing intended)

I've tried echo ![!__jobcard], but no dice. If i try !!__jobcard, then all I
get is the literal "!__jobcard".
I know there's a way, but I'm stumped, and it's a long way to go til
quitting time!
Tony