So far as I know BSAM UPDAT is the right approach but you're going to need two paths in your program, one for "update a record in the middle" and one for "extend."
You're going to have to do your own blocking in any event; that is, have logic to read a block, change one record, and write the whole block back. **Some** of the "inconsistencies" of BSAM versus QSAM versus VSAM have been papered over, I believe, by LE. You might look into whether LE has the logic to do this with a single path in your application. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thomas David Rivers Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 2:22 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Generically update/extend a pre-existing file? I've got a vexing problem that could probably use the collected wisdom assembled here :-) I want to open a sequential (non-PDS/PDSE, non-HFS) fixed block file for output, POINT to a particular TTR and write a record without truncating the file. This is all BSAM I/O. The documentation is very clear that opening for OUTPUT, and POINTING truncates the file - but that means I loose data. Opening the file for UPDAT would seem like a reasonable thing to do, but I may be extending the file, or altering blocks/records in-the-middle. So, that probably won't work either. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
