Error messages are printed whenever an invalid CICS instruction is found use the following format:

• Error summary.
• Text of the CICS statement (without margins).
• More detailed explanations, if necessary.

Summaries may contain "Instruction invalid" (in the case of IGNORE and HANDLE instructions), "No rules matching the following instruction", "Several rules matching the following instruction".

IGNORE and HANDLE instructions messages are quite straightforward:

IGNORE must be constructed with CONDITION"

When no rules match a CICS instruction, then for all the commands starting by the same keyword, the error message lists why the command does not fit.

• <command> expects one of <keyword list>, but none is present.
• <command> expects <keyword>, but could not find it.
• <command> does not know about <keyword>.
• In <command>, <keyword> expects either: … <keyword> (one of <keyword list>), … but none of them were found.
• In <command>, <keyword> is present and not <keyword> even if they must be used at the same time.
• In <command>, <keyword> and <keyword> cannot be used at the same time.
• Default value of <keyword> is supposed to be computed with value of <keyword>, but its value (<value>) is not a charstring.

If several commands match, the preprocessor lists them all. This will not actually happen, as the preprocessor checks the commands for ambiguity before translation.