> Paul Gilmartin wrote:
> The design integrity of OS/360's I/O architecture has been much > compromised with the advent of utilities which gratuitously > (sometimes with a goal of performance) enforce device dependence. > Such utilities should at least support, if possible, a fallback > to device-independent I/O. > As an irritating example, AMATERSE refuses to UNPACK an archive > from a UNIX file. It certainly has the capability -- the rule > can be circumvented by pre-concatenating an empty temp Classic > data set to deceive whatever check the designers imagined necessary. > (Apparently they test only the first catenand.) AMATERSE was formally IBMTERSE. I believe it was considered an FDP and used by IBM support. Due to customer demand, it was added to MVS. I doubt that much effort goes into maintaining this program. It queried the dataset attributes which don't exist for Unix files. I believe it wanted RECFM=F blksize=2048. AMATERSE is a bad example. Out of interest, what other utilities are you talking about? Thanks, Jon.
