Two operands serve to determine the variable(s) to which the command call is to apply: the variable name in the VARIABLE-NAME operand and, as an additional “search” criterion, the scope in the SELECT operand. This means that, in addition to querying the variables that are declared in a particular procedure, the programmer can also obtain information on which variables are visible during a job.
The nature of the output is controlled by a single operand: INFORMATION. This determines: first, the data type of the output; and secondly, whether the output is simply the variable values, or whether the variable names are to be output in addition. If a variable has been declared but not yet initialized, the value output for it is the string ’*NO-INIT’ (however, this only applies to INFORMATION = *PAR(VALUE = *C-LITERAL or VALUE = *X-LITERAL or VALUE = *WITHOUT-QUOTES)).