CHAIN

The CHAIN statement exits the current program and transfers process control to the program defined by the expression. Process control will never return to the originating program.

COMMAND SYNTAX

    CHAIN expression

SYNTAX ELEMENTS

The expression should evaluate to a valid UNIX or Windows command (this may be another jBC program). The command string may be suffixed with the (I option, which will cause any COMMON variables in the current program to be inherited by the new program (providing it is a jBC program).

NOTES

There are no restrictions to the CHAIN statement and you may CHAIN from anywhere to anywhere. However, it is advisable that your program follows a logical path easily seen by another programmer. If the program, which contains the CHAIN command (the current program) was called from a JCL program, and the program to be executed (the target program) is another jBC program, control will return to the original JCL program when the target program terminates. If the target program is a JCL program, control will return to the command shell when the JCL program terminates.

EXAMPLES

        CHAIN "OFF" ;* exit via the OFF command

        ! Prog1
        COMMON A,B
        A = 50 ; B = 100
        CHAIN "NEWPROG (I"

        ! NEWPROG
        COMMON I,J
        ! I and J inherited
        CRT I,J