We have of course been here before. The idea that a desired USER ABEND is best achieved by triggering a SYSTEM ABEND that will be minimally confusing, highly unlikely to be confused with the corresponding real SYSTEM ABEND, does not seem to want to die.
Why try to trick the system into issuing an ABEND when you can do it yourself? USER ABENDS are immediately available by coding an ABEND macro instruction. They specify a [USER] completion code; and they may, optionally but desirably, specify a fullword user code too. This whole discussion of the relative merits of these triggering mechanisms is thus otiose at best. The only gotcha that can arise in connection with such an ABEND macro instruction is that one issued in AR mode must be preceded by a | SYSTATE ASCENV=AR macro instruction, but surely those of you who are writing AR-mode code can cope with this difficulty; and those of you who cannot should not be doing it. -- John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
