You can use ampersand (&) substitution as opposed to apostrophe substitution, to preserve case during traditional parsing. The following traditional parsing example shows a series of commands that change the case of a character string: $ set process/parse_style=traditional $ x = "string" $ define y 'x' $ sho log y "Y" = "STRING" (LNM$PROCESS_TABLE) $ define y &x %DCL-I-SUPERSEDE, previous value of Y has been superseded $ sho log y "Y" = "string" (LNM$PROCESS_TABLE) Note that the use of the ampersand (&) preserved the case of the character string assigned to the x variable. Apostrophe substitution takes place before the command line is set to uppercase, and ampersand substitution takes place after the command line is set to uppercase. The following extended parsing example shows the same series of commands: $ set process/parse_style=extended $ define y 'x' %DCL-I-SUPERSEDE, previous value of Y has been superseded $ sho log y "Y" = "string" (LNM$PROCESS_TABLE) $ define y &x %DCL-I-SUPERSEDE, previous value of Y has been superseded $ sho log y "Y" = "string" (LNM$PROCESS_TABLE) Note that both character strings for the y variable are returned lowercase. This happens because the DEFINE command uses $FILE, which preserves the case. Ampersand substitution can therefore be used to specify EXTENDED file names even though the parse style is set to TRADITIONAL, as shown in the following example: $ set process/parse=extended $ cre file^ name.doc Contents of an ODS5 file Exit $ set process/parse=traditional $ a = "file^ name.doc" $ type file^ name.doc %DCL-W-PARMDEL, invalid parameter delimiter - check use of special characters \^NAME\ $ type 'a' %DCL-W-PARMDEL, invalid parameter delimiter - check use of special characters \^NAME\ $ type &a Contents of an ODS5 file NOTE Ampersand substitution does not work for foreign commands.