Paul, Carriage (aka "printer") control characters are always in column 1 if my OS education of long, long ago is to be relied upon - in other words I have eschewed looking up any manuals. The 9 is mentioned because it's the addition of 1 and 8, in that order - in other words, column 1 for the carriage control character and columns 2 to 9 for the sequence number - I guess - but I could be wrong. Maybe Tom has it the wrong way round.
I expect VBM and VBA, actually any xxxA and xxxM, are identical except for the way the carriage control character is interpreted. I would be surprised if concatenated data sets could not be used in any context which expects a sequential data set - but, again, I could be wrong. Why make complicated exceptions when it's all done for you? The real reason I'm posting - and again relying on positively antique OS education - is that I have always treated it as a golden rule of data set concatenation that the attributes of the first data set in the concatenation reign supreme - in other words, the attributes of the first data set will be the ones set in the OS control blocks at the time the data set is opened and the attributes of succeeding data sets are utterly ignored. Well, I dare say there may be some exceptions to this rule and this is the perfect forum for these exceptions to be "flushed out". Having got to the end of this post and seen a manual reference, I decided it wasn't fair on my the contributors and audience not to check the manual. What Tom has given us is very much exactly what section 3.4.4.1.4 SYSTSIN DD Statement of the said manual says. Now I'll stick my neck out and suggest that maybe the manual author has got a few points wrong - including forgetting about the "machine", M, carriage control character (actually the printer CCW code if my memory serves me well). Manual authors getting it wrong has also been known from time to time. Chris Mason ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Gilmartin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU> Sent: Tuesday, 14 March, 2006 7:41 PM Subject: Re: Batch TMP RECFM(VB) Input > In a recent note, Tom Schmidt said: > > > Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 12:14:08 -0600 > > > > > > If SYSTSIN is a variable length data set (VB), the first 8 bytes of the > > record will be treated as a sequence number and ignored. If SYSTSIN is a > > variable length data set with ASA control characters (VBA), the first 9 > > bytes of the record will be treated as a sequence number, followed by a > > carriage control character and ignored. > > > ??? Gulp! Is there any printer driver or utility that honors > ASA carriage control in column 9 as the above suggests? > What's the point? > > It fails to make clear what the behavior is for RECFM=VBM. > > > You cannot refer to concatenated data sets on the SYSTSIN DD statement. > > > Hmmm. I hadn't known this. I'll have to try one and see how it > fails. Does it mean, perhaps, merely that concatenated data sets > must have similar attributes? > > > Each command or subcommand must begin on a separate statement. > > > Sounds redundant. Aren't "command" and "statement" synonyms? > > > The fine manual being, in this case, TSO/E User's Guide Chapter 16, the > > section heading is "Submitting Jobs in TSO Batch", subsection "Writing JCL > > for Command Execution" subheading "SYSTSIN DD Statement". > > > FSVO "fine". (That's actually unfair. The manual is probably > pretty fine; the subject matter is crude.) > > IBM's lexical conventions, traceable to the limitations of the > 029 keypunch and 407 card reader (I know, but..) are unduly > burdensome. They deter beginners starting on the mainframe > career track. No professor, having a limited number of > lectures to deliver, will choose to waste any of them describing > the continuation conventions for JCL, or HLASM, or even TSO. > It's more productive to teach UNIX or Windows instead. > > -- gil > -- > StorageTek > INFORMATION made POWERFUL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
