Each PARADYME routine is designed to update or maintain a buffer record. In many cases this is a data record held on the system disk. This may be retrieved in the routine, or passed to it via COMMON or the subroutine parameter list and used as the buffer record. However, other times, the screen is used to capture parameters which will be used in some future processing. In such a case, no buffer record is initialised for use within the program. To prevent a runtime error occurring, this parameter may be set so that the buffer record is initialised to NULL$ at the start of the program.

If the user enters 'Y', the buffer record is set to NULL$. If the user enters [RETURN] or 'N' then no initialisation takes place.