Frank You'll be wanting symbol substitution in the instream data next!
That actually was I wanted to help me manage for my test/education systems where I did a great deal of work at the (VM) console. I just wanted to be able to set up started task procedures in order to do all sorts of operations without having to bother to start up TSO. This often meant setting up procedures calling utility programs which - since time immemorial - make that the mid- '60s - have used much of the time trivial statements in a SYSIN data set. If I anticipate what I usually need I can set up a started task procedure with a suitable name with suitable symbol variables. I then used a little program I wrote - no longer available I'm afraid to say - which converted the PARM data into card image records. Naturally I needed a convention for special characters in order to cause the start of a new record and so on. Obviously the temporary output data set from this little program is the typically SYSIN data set of a following utility program step. And, as you might guess, there is a further step which is another little program - also no longer available I'm afraid to say - which can take the temporary output, SYSPRINT often, data set from the utility and "print" it with WTO statements on the (VM) console. Note that sometimes the function was performed with batch TSO - still not "having to bother to start up TSO", as it were. In this way I get both to have a procedure which benefits from sort- of "instream" data *and* symbol substitution! - Oh! the answer to your question is that a procedure consists of job control language statements and the card images between the //xxxxx DD * and /* card images are not job control language statements. Chris Mason On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:59:59 -0600, Frank Swarbrick <[email protected]> wrote: >Now that we've been on z/OS for a few weeks I feel to need to ask a question that has annoyed me since I started working on z/OS two years ago. Instream datasets are good. Why are they not supported inside of procs? Is there a technical reason, or is it just "because"? We use procs for almost all of our production jobs, with many steps that could take advantage of instream datasets if not for this restriction. > >Thanks, >Frank > >-- > >Frank Swarbrick >Applications Architect - Mainframe Applications Development >FirstBank Data Corporation - Lakewood, CO USA >P: 303-235-1403 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
