# 4.5 Type Declaration Statements

Type declaration statements explicitly define the data type of specified symbolic names. There are two forms of type declaration statements: numeric type declarations and character type declarations.

Type declaration statements can initialize data in the same way as the DATA statement: by having values bounded by slashes and listed immediately after the symbolic name of the entity.

Rules and Behavior

Type declaration statements must precede all executable statements.

The data type of a symbolic name can be declared only once.

Once a symbolic name has been used in a context that implicitly assumes a data type, its assumed type cannot be changed by a type declaration statement.

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