Shmuel wrote: <snip> Assuming that the caller has initialized the save area and subsequently used it in accordance with IBM linkage conventions, offset 4-7 will contain 4 EBCDIC characters ending iin SA only if it is 144 bytes long; </snip> Not true. An example is the longest-existing. That's where the creator of the save area (the target module) identifies that it saved the caller's regs on the linkage stack so placed 'F1SA' at +4.
<snip> If the linkage conventions are followed, under what circumstances would you be unable to follow the forward chain with a little bit of work? </snip> Within your application, maybe, as long as it doesn't use F1SA. If it uses F1SA there is no way of knowing if the forward chain is 4 bytes at +8 or 8 bytes at +136.. Once you get into the system, linkage conventions are not necessarily followed (and additional ones are used), for performance and integrity reasons. Peter Relson z/OS Core Technology Design
