; Special character

This special character is supported only for backward compatibility.

The semicolon (;), when combined with a second character in the Procedure Editor, provides alternative representations of special characters as follows:

To suppress the semicolon’s interpretation as a special character, precede it with a tilde (~). For example, to enter the string ;< in the Procedure Editor and not have ABL interpret it as an open bracket, type ~;<.

Additionally, if an ASCII character is mapped to an extended alphabetical character by an IN statement in the PROTERMCAP file, you can enter the extended character in the Procedure Editor by preceding the ASCII character with a semicolon. For example, if [ is mapped to Ä, ABL interprets the ;[ sequence as Ä.