LET

The LET statement assigns values to variables.

Syntax

LET target = expr [,...]
  1. target is the name of the variable to be assigned.
  2. expr is any valid expression supported by the language.

Usage

The LET statement assigns a value to a variable, or a set of values to all members of a RECORD by using the .* notation.

The runtime system applies data type conversion rules if the data type of expr does not correspond to the data type of target.

When assigning a numeric or date/time value to a character string variable, the values are formatted for display (for example, the numeric data is right-aligned).

When specifying a comma-separated list of expressions for the right operand, the LET statement concatenates all expressions together. Unlike the || operator, if an expression in the comma-separated list evaluates to NULL, the concatenation result will not be null, except if all expressions to the right of the equal sign are null.

The target variable can be a record followed by dot- star (record.*), to reference all record members of the record. In this case, the right operand must also be a record using this notation, and all members will be assigned individually.

Variables defined with a complex data type (like TEXT or BYTE) can only be assigned to NULL.

Example

SCHEMA stores 
MAIN
  DEFINE c1, c2 RECORD LIKE customer.*
  -- Single variable assignment
  LET c1.customer_num = 123
  -- Complete RECORD assignment
  LET c1.* = c2.*
END MAIN