SQS Syntax

SQS Syntax (where SQS stands for Status Quo Script) was the main syntax in Operation Flashpoint and is still available in ArmA: Armed Assault. It can only be used for scripts, but not for functions, in the Mission Editor or in addon config files. The alternative syntax is SQF Syntax.

Rules

Binding rules:

• Statements are separated by line breaks and semicolons (;) and commas (,). This means that a statement must not span over multiple lines.
• Curled braces ({ }) group code to blocks. A block is considered a single statement, thus may not span over multiple lines.

Example

STATEMENT 1
STATEMENT 2; STATEMENT 3, STATEMENT 4

BLOCK { STATEMENT 5; STATEMENT 6 }

Comments

A line beginning with a semicolon (

) is considered a comment and ignored by the game engine.

Example

; this is my comment

Language Constructs

The control structures listed in the article Control Structures may also be used in SQS syntax. Note that they must be written within a single line due to the above rules.

Example

if (_value == 1) then { hint "Value is 1" } else { hint "Value is not 1" }

There exist also special structures limited to SQS syntax.

Tilde

The tilde (~) symbol tells the script to wait X amount of seconds (see sleep in SQF):

hint "3..." ~1 hint "2..." ~1 hint "1..." ~1 hint "GO!"

Label

You may define labels in the code by beginning a line with #, followed by the name of the label (without spaces). You may use the command goto at any point of the script to jump to this label (and potentially create a loop).

#Label1 ~1 hint format ["a second has passed. time: %1", round time] goto "Label1"

Conditional

You may query a Boolean condition and define code, that is executed only when the condition is true. Note that there is no equivalent for "else". A conditional line must start with ?, followed by the condition and :, followed by one or more commands. Multiple commands are separated by commas (,) or semicolons (;). The conditional statement ends with the end of the line.

? alive target : hint "target is alive, let's destroy it"; target setDammage 1

@

Much like the waitUntil statement in SQF Syntax, @ will evaluate a certain condition, and the script will pause until @ returns true.

@not alive target

Notes

Due to the line-based nature of SQS scripts, it is not possible to create multiline string constants in them. To overcome this limitation you can store multiline in separate SQF function files and load them using loadFile or preprocessFile (the second uses C-like preprocessor with // or /* */ comments and #define macros).

Limitations

In Operation Flashpoint v1.96, if a single line of a sqs file is longer than 4096 characters, Operation Flashpoint will return an error and will not execute the line.

See also

• SQF Syntax
• Script File
• Statement
• Block