> > -----Original Message----- > > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Behalf Of Bruce Black > > Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 12:26 PM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: Re: [IBM-MAIN] WHY IS JCL ALLERGIC TO LOWER CASE? > > > > > > > > > > ISNT IT TRUE THAT IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS ONLY UPPER CASE ? > > Just in case you are serious: my S/360 green card (undated) > > shows upper > > and lower EBCDIC values. But early 3270s only supported > > upper case, and > > I vaguely remember that 026 keypunches didn't have lower case > > either (I > > think that came with the 029 keypunch). So us oldtimers rarely saw > > lower case in the "good old" days. > > > > -- > > Bruce A. Black
Ahhh, I remember the good old days.... No shift keys, no lower-case - it was so simple... There are some issues with lower case - data set names cannot contain lower case characters; a parm that inserts data for a data set name will be rejected with a JCL error. It's also not clear what the JCL processor should do with lower-case. Do the programs that get invoked expect lower-case? How many programs (in the world) would have to upper-case items to properly interpret them? Parameters like AMP, STORCLAS, MGMTCLAS, and others added over the years would have to be modified to support lower-case. It's not just "allowing them in JCL" - some of these parameters are passed to IBM components, and to vendor products. Can you imagine how much work it would take to support lower-case? Thanks, Mark Thomen Catalog/IDCAMS/VSAM Development ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
