Runtime Considerations › Runtime Control Parameters › PARM Field Parameters

PARM Field Parameters

Input parameters allow you to specify the following:

• A mainline dialog or application task code—The runtime system begins application execution at the specified dialog or at the function associated with the specified task code. The function must be associated with a mainline dialog.

  Alternatively, you can specify a dialog or task code using the ENTRY POINT control statement, as described later in this chapter. The ENTRY POINT statement overrides the input parameter specification.

• Runtime parameter—You can optionally specify an alphanumeric character string as a parameter that is to be passed to the application. Dialog processes can read the string into variable storage by issuing an ACCEPT RUN PARAMETERS command, as described in Process Command Language.

Specifying Parameters

Under z/OS and z/VSE, you specify input parameters in the PARMS field parameter of the EXEC statement. The mainline dialog or application task code is specified as the first parameter. The runtime parameter is specified as the third parameter. The second parameter is reserved for future use. Parameters must be separated by commas. The value assigned to the job variable may not exceed 10 characters. For example:

PARM='DIALOG1'
PARM='TASKA,,ABCDEFG'

PARM=',,ABCDEFG'