Character Host Variables

The syntax for character host variable declarations is as follows:

DECLARE var-name-spec CHARACTER [(length)] [VARYING] align-scope-storage ;

where:

var-name-spec is {variable-name | (variable-name, ...) }
align-scope-storage     is any set of PL/I alignment, scope, or storage class attributes

Note:
  • For non-varying character host variables, length must be a constant no greater than the maximum length for SQL CHAR data.
  • For varying-length character host variables, length must be a constant greater than the maximum length for SQL LONG VARCHAR data.
  • DCL, CHAR, and VAR are accepted as abbreviations for DECLARE, CHARACTER, and VARYING, respectively.