>In order for you to receive the errors you fear, you will need to
>change your JCL to pass more bytes than your programs are expecting.
>This is always a problem -- for 100 bytes or 65535 bytes.

That's what I said *but* a program will not get control today because
of the JCL error you get. It will, however, get control with the
suggested change.

>The fix is simple.  Just don't pass more than a program is expecting.

Sure, don't make a mistake and there will be no error ;-(

>Today, that is a certain error (JCL error), tomorrow it will still be
>an error (program not expecting error).  Either way it is an error.
>Nothing in this change can break a program that is currently working
>correctly today.

How about the code sniplet below? Sure it would be better to also 
verify the upper bound, i.e. 100 bytes, but is it really necessary, 
especially if the program was written when batch was the way to run 
programs? I would not count on the fact it was always done.

And before someone else points at it: Yes, this program will not
correctly handle the case when it is ATTACHed, LINKed, called from 
TSO, etc., etc. with a PARM longer than 100 bytes. The program was 
defined to run in batch.

GetParm  DS    0H
         L     R1,0(,R1)         Get address of PARM field
         LH    R5,0(,R1)         Get length of PARM data specified
         LTR   R5,R5             Anything specified?
         BZ    NoParm            None received
         BCTR  R5,0              Adjust length for MVC
         EX    R5,MoveParm       Move PARM data to internal field
         ...
         ...
MoveParm MVC   ParmData(0),2(R1)
         ...
         ...
ParmData        DS CL100
AjustmentFactor DC H'17'         Used in converting "X" to "Y" 


According to the principle of least astonishment, we should not 
incompatibly change the rules to benefit a few programs.

Peter Hunkeler
Senior IT Specialist, IBM zSeries Technical Sales Support, Switzerland

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