DAL automatically creates a variable if the first time you use it is to assign it a variable, for example:
MyVar = "This text string."
If the variable MyVar did not exist, then it would automatically be created and assigned the given value. If you use a DAL variable in any other statement before creating a runtime syntax, this causes an error.
When you have routines that would usually expect a DAL variable to have been previously declared before reaching this code, you may include a statement such as:
MyVar = MyVar
This will create the variable if it did not exist, but it does not change the value of the DAL variable if it was previously declared and assigned a value.
You can also use the DECLARE function to ensure that a variable exists without assigning it a value. That is, instead of using:
MyVar = MyVar
you can use:
Declare("MyVar")
If you do not specify the code page parameter, then the existing string variable does not change. New variable declarations use the default code page if you omit the parameter.
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