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string_exp - Character String Operator

One string operator is currently available for string expressions.

Other versions: 7.31 | 7.40 | 7.54

Syntax

... operand1 && operand2 ...

Effect

The chaining operator && concatenates two operands in a string expression as a character string.

The operand positions operand are character-like expression positions, which means that character-like data objects, string expressions, and predefined functions, or functional methods and method chainings whose return code has a character-like data type, can be specified. In particular, this means that you can also specify string templates.

In operands with a fixed length, trailing blanks are ignored.

Notes

• We recommend string functions with character-like return codes when you specify predefined functions as operands.

• Do not confuse the chaining operator && with the literal operator &, which concatenates two character literals as a literal. The literal operator is generally used if you want to define a literal string template across multiple program lines. The operator is executed only once, when the program is compiled and trailing blanks of character literals are always respected. A character string expression with a chaining operator, on the other hand, is recalculated each time (like all expressions) and can be used to concatenate any number of character-like operands.

Example

Concatenation of four operands as the character string "Hello world!". The last operand is a string template that has only literal content.

DATA text TYPE string VALUE `Hello`. 

text  = text && ` ` &&  'world' && |!|.