The = command appears after the request and specifies one less than the total number of requests to be submitted, because the first request has already been submitted when the = command is stated.
The = command is used most often interactively to resubmit a SELECT statement that had run under the wrong formatting option. After obtaining output in an unexpected format, submit the BTEQ commands to correct the formatting options and then use the = command to get the reformatted output.
The value for the = command is 1 by default, which repeats the prior command one time only.
For example:
.REPEAT 7 =6
The following script, using the BTEQ = command performs the same update:
.IMPORT data file=raiseemp using enumb (char(5)) update workforce.employee set salary=salary*1.07 where empno = :enumb; =1
The choice between using the REPEAT command and the = command is a personal preference. The only differences between the two commands are in the value for the count field, and the default values.