Hi Jonathan! Regarding the &SYS_HLASM_DATE option, it seems like that doesn’t work too well for us (the Dignus assembler) as we different maintenance approaches.
So this doesn’t help with “portable” code between the two assemblers. I don’t expect that to be a major concern to IBM, but I was wondering if a more abstract approach might be better? Something along the lines of other feature-test symbols in other languages? That is, when facility X is available, perhaps &SYS_HLASM_FACILITY_X could be defined? With this approach, the user has to know that a new facility was available on a particular date for example, which PTFs were available at that date. What if the user applies a later PTF and not an earlier one? And, the facility in question is only available with the earlier one? - Thanks! - - Dave Rivers - > On Jan 30, 2019, at 4:53 AM, Jonathan Scott <jonathan_sc...@vnet.ibm.com> > wrote: > > APAR PH06374 - &SYS_HLASM_DATE containing HLASM PTF build date > > See: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=isg1PH06374 > <http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=isg1PH06374> > > - There is a new symbol &SYS_HLASM_DATE which contains the date > HLASM was built, in the form yyyymmdd, which is usually the > date the latest PTF was built. This makes it possible to > determine whether a fix is present by checking whether the > value is greater than or equal to the date of the > corresponding entry in the INFO report. > > - To avoid errors when referencing any new symbol on older > levels of HLASM, it is possible to define a created SET symbol > of the same name, which will be referenced if the system > symbol is not defined, for example as follows: > > &(SYS_HLASM_DATE) SETC '00000000' Default low value > AIF ('&SYS_HLASM_DATE' LT '20181231').OLD > > This method is also valid for all previous releases of HLASM. > It works because a created SET symbol reference is always > taken to refer to a SET symbol, not to a system variable > symbol or macro parameter.
