It is no longer permissible to use any special characters for the special character operand type (spec). Instead, only the special characters explicitly listed in the operand description may be used. This change is necessary because the special characters have a special significance during syntax analysis and exotic multibyte special characters from Unicode character sets can cause problems during this operation.
The program name for the SDF syntax check, the type of program name for the SDF syntax check and the characters for separating records are now defined for each work file separately and not globally. This change helps simplify the behavior of the @PAR statement. There are now only two exceptions to the rule that @PAR can be used to make settings for each work file separately.
The initial value of the symbolic line number for hit lines ? is now 0.0000 instead of 0.0001. By predefining an invalid value, it is possible to determine whether any search statement has been issued.
The special mark 13 (record should be ignored when the file is written) is now also taken into account for POSIX files. The previous exceptional treatment of POSIX files was unjustified.
Specifications of file names, library elements and job variable names in statements are subjected to a syntax check and may be rejected with a syntax error message if appropriate.
All interruptible statements can now be aborted with [K2] and /INFORM-PROGRAM. In the past, behavior was inconsistent.
The previous handling of European 7-bit terminals is no longer supported since it does not harmonize with the general support for 7-bit character sets. Special handling has been implemented to support the character set EDF03DRV, the only national 7-bit code recognized in XHCS.