In many cases, each text line will contain a command. The maximum line length is almost 4 KB, which should be sufficient even for complex commands.
However, since a much shorter line length is convenient for screen display and editing (in most cases 72 or 80 characters), long commands are usually split up into several lines. If a command extends over more than one text line, a hyphen must be written as the last character in all lines except the last line. All continuation lines begin with a slash, immediately followed by the continuation of the command. To permit continuation lines to be indented so that the result is easier to read without the runtime log having to contain the same number of blanks as represented by the indentation, the first slash of a continuation line may be preceded by blanks; these are not part of the command.
Using continuation lines and indentation is particularly advisable to improve the readability of nested operand structures such as the following:
/ MODIFY-FILE-ATTRIBUTES -
/FILE-NAME = INFO.TXT, -
/PROTECTION = *PARAMETERS(/ACCESS
= *READ, -
/USER-ACCESS = *ALL-USERS), -
/MIGRATE = *ALLOWED
On the other hand, it is also permissible to write several commands in the same line, provided they are separated by semicolons:
/ IF (MODE == 'DEBUG'); WRITE-TEXT 'check file &A'; END-IF