The basic elements and constructs necessary to use WFL are listed and described in this section. Some general facts and restrictions regarding WFL elements are discussed in the following paragraphs, and many of the basic elements and constructs are syntactically defined on the following topics.

WFL uses the EBCDIC character set; use of any invalid EBCDIC character is illegal except in column 1.

Identifiers and numbers are terminated by any nonalphanumeric character (including a blank).

No identifier, constant, string, or multicharacter delimiter can be broken across a card boundary. Numeric constants and multicharacter delimiters cannot have embedded blank characters.

WFL source records can be terminated by a percent sign (%). The remainder of the WFL source record is not scanned and can contain any comments.