An EQUEL/Fortran statement does not need a statement terminator. Although the convention is to not use a statement terminator in EQUEL statements, the preprocessor does allow a semicolon at the end of EQUEL statements. The preprocessor also ignores it.

For example, it interprets the following two statements as the same:

and

EQUEL statements that are made up of a few other statements, such as a display loop, only allow a semicolon after the last statement. For example:

When using a retrieve loop, place a semicolon after the retrieve statement to disassociate the loop code inside the braces from the retrieve statement itself. Variable declarations made visible to EQUEL follow the normal Fortran declaration syntax. Therefore, do not use a statement terminator on variable declarations.