Basic attributes
If you’re familiar with another programming language, knowing the following attributes will help orient you to dBL. If dBL is your first programming language, you may not recognize some of the terminology below. Keep the rules in mind; the terminology will be explained later in this series of topics.
dBL is not case-sensitive.
Although language elements are capitalized using certain conventions in the dBL Language Reference, you are not required to follow these conventions.
Rules of thumb for how things are capitalized are listed in Syntax conventions. You are encouraged to follow these rules when you create your own names for variables and properties.
dBL is line-oriented.
By default, there is one line per statement, and one statement per line. You may use the semicolon (;) to continue a statement on the next line, or to combine multiple statements on the same line.
Most structural language elements use keyword pairs.
Most structual language elements start with a specific keyword, and end with a paired keyword. The ending keyword is usually the word starting keyword preceded by the word END; for example IF/ENDIF, CLASS/ENDCLASS, and TRY/ENDTRY.
Literal strings are delimited by single quotes, double quotes, or square brackets.
dBL is weakly typed with automatic type conversion.
You don’t have to declare a variable before you use it. You can change the type of a variable at any time.
dBASE Plus’s object model supports dynamic subclassing.
Dynamic subclassing allows you to add new properties on-the-fly, properties that were not declared in the class structure.