I miss ISPF when I am on CMS and I miss XEDIT when I am on TSO. Some of the CMS commands are built on top of XEDIT, and it is a very nice framework for building an IDE, although the 3270 does keep you from remapping key strokes. Any chance that IBM would let you have a copy of your personal toolkit?
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jonathan Scott <00001b5498fc732f-dmarc-requ...@listserv.uga.edu> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 5:18 AM To: ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> Subject: Re: Using (0) to suppress alignment checks in HLASM External Message: Use Caution I've not tried to get access to HLASM after retiring from IBM because I think any access would fall disappointingly far short of what I was used to. HLASM was developed under VM/CMS from the start (late 1980s), and when I got involved I set up lots of useful tools (written in REXX and CMS Pipelines) to make it very simple and fast to code and test changes informally, using CMS SFS directories. When I first joined IBM (in CICS), I implemented a set of XEDIT macros to make XEDIT much more intelligent and productive, for example just press Enter with the cursor in the file area to set the current line and column and switch the cursor to the command line, and press Enter in the command area without making any changes to switch the cursor back to the current row and column. I could also for example insert an assembler or PL/X box comment template with a PF key and split, join or reflow the text in it without affecting the box delimiters. This meant that when I later joined the HLASM team, for a small change I could update a product source module, assemble and link it directly on CMS, run a test and rename the output to save it in less than 20 seconds. I know that because on one occasion I wanted to compare four different ways of showing something in the listing, so I tried each one, then I started to compare the listings, and discovered that amazingly all four had the same time stamp in hours and minutes so I didn't need to ignore the header lines. CMS was also very useful for debugging, for example making it possible to use CP TRACE to trap a store into a particular location to catch overwriting. I find raw XEDIT or ISPF to be very clumsy in comparison. The ISPF editor is OK, but the way in which source files are managed is not, and tools are far easier to create on CMS, especially using CMS Pipelines and SFS directories. And of course on VM/CMS there are standard commands provided to invoke the assembler and other tools interactively, and it is easy to write simple tools to automate them, unlike on z/OS where the "standard" interactive interface is ISPF menus. CMS is of course very primitive - an old single-user operating system, almost a toy - but it did most of what I needed very well. Jonathan Scott -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of Seymour J Metz Sent: 03 September 2025 21:21 To: ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: Using (0) to suppress alignment checks in HLASM No zPDT or equivalent. That's exactly what I would expect, or maybe a warning rather than informational. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר
