CAN/CSA-ISO/IEC-11756-96

The international community has decided to make this standard available only in the English language version. It has been adopted as a National Standard of Canada on this basis. This National Standard of Canada is equivalent to International Standard ISO/IEC 11756:1992. Part 1: MUMPS Language Specification Introduction Part 1 consists of two sections that describe the MUMPS language. Section 1 describes the metalanguage used in the remainder of Part 1 for the static syntax. Section 2 describes the static syntax and overall semantics of the language. The distinction between "static" and "dynamic" syntax is as follows. The static syntax describes the sequence of characters in a routine as it appears on a tape in routine interchange or on a listing. The dynamic syntax describes the sequence of characters that would be encountered by an interpreter during execution of the routine. (There is no requirement that MUMPS actually be interpreted). The dynamic syntax takes into account transfers of control and values produced by indirection. Part 2: MUMPS Portability requirements Introduction Part 2 highlights, for the benefit of implementors and application programmers, aspects of the language that must be accorded special attention if MUMPs program transferability (i.e., portability of source code between various MUMPs implementations) is to be achieved. It provides a specification of limits that must be observed by both implementors and programmers if portability is not to be ruled out. To this end, implementors must meet or exceed these limits, treating them as a minimum requirement. Any implementor who provides definitions in currently undefined areas must take into account that this action risks jeopardizing the upward compatibility of the implementation, upon subsequent revision of the MUMPS Language Specification. Application programmers striving to develop portable programs must take into account the danger of employing "unilateral extensions" to the language made available by the implementor. The following definitions apply to the use of the terms explicit limit and implicit limit within this document. An explicit limit is one which applies directly to a referenced language construct. Implicit limits on language constructs are second-order effects resulting from explicit limits on other language constructs. For example, the explicit command line length restriction places an implicit limit on the length of any construct which must be expressed entirely within a single command line.