Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

Metacommand Syntax
 
Metacommands begin with a dollar sign ($) and are always enclosed
in a program comment. More than one metacommand can be given in one
comment. Multiple metacommands are separated by white-space characters:
space, tab, or line feed. Metacommands that take arguments have a
colon between the metacommand and the argument:
 
  REM $METACOMMAND [:argument]
 
String arguments must be enclosed in single quotation marks. White-space
characters between elements of a metacommand are ignored. The following
are both valid forms for metacommands:
 
  REM $STATIC $INCLUDE:  'datadefs.bi'
  REM   $STATIC    $INCLUDE :  'datadefs.bi'
  ' $STATIC $INCLUDE: 'datadefs.bi'
  '     $STATIC    $INCLUDE :  'datadefs.bi'
 
Note that no spaces appear between the dollar sign and the rest of
the metacommand.
 
If you want to refer to a metacommand in a description but do not
want it to execute, place a character that is not a tab or space
before the first dollar sign on the line. For example, on the
following line both metacommands are ignored:
 
  REM x$STATIC $INCLUDE:  'datadefs.bi'