Symbol substring specification

1  & symbol_name ( start?  : number ) .

where:

symbol_name

The name of the symbol, for example USERID.

start

The character position where the substring is to start. The first character in the original symbol is position 1, the second is position 2, and so on. If start is positive, the system counts from the starting position to the end of the string. If start is negative (in other words, a minus sign appears before it), the system counts backwards from the ending position of the string.

number

The number of characters, from the starting position to the ending position of the string, that the substring is to contain. If number is not specified, the substring length defaults to 1. Do not specify a negative number for number.

For example, if the substitution value for symbol &PGM. contains MYPROG1, and you want to limit the qualifier to the first six characters, you can specify

&PGM(1:6).