Literal Delimiters

The delimiters used in user-defined macros (parentheses and commas) are literal delimiters. A literal delimiter can be any character except the metacharacter. When you define a macro using a literal delimiter, you must use exactly that delimiter when you call the macro, to prevent a macro error.

When defining a macro, the delimiter string must be literalized if the delimiter meets any of the following conditions:

• Has more than one character.
• Has a macro-identifier character (A-Z, 0-9, _, or ?).
• Has an at sign ('@'), space, tab, carriage return, or linefeed.

Use the escape function (%n) or the bracket function (%()) to literalize the delimiter string.

This is the simple form shown previously:

However, in the following example, brackets are used instead of parentheses. The @ symbol separates parameters:

In the next box, delimiters that could be id delimiters are defined as literal delimiters:

Spaces around AND are considered part of the argument string.