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Verb Statements

NCL verbs cause actions to occur. There are different types of verbs, some that dictate the flow of processing and logic, others that fetch information for the procedure to process and others that cause data to flow to external targets.

The following are examples of verb statements:

&DOWHILE

Causes processing to continue in a loop while a certain condition exists.

&WRITE

Allows a procedure to write a message to the user's terminal.

&FILE

Allows a procedure to read, write, or delete records on a file.

NCL statements that contain a verb have the following general form:

verb [ opt=opt  &variable ...  &variable ]

where verb is the keyword that is the name of the verb to be executed, opt is a keyword operand identifying a sub function of the verb, and &variable represents parameters required as input to the verb's actions, or the names of variables that receive the results of the verb's execution.