Gil, We're strictly talking _JCL_-_PARM_ parameters here, where there does exist a 100-byte length limit imposed by JCL syntax rules. Passing parameter values from one called _program_ to another called _program_ is a completely different animal and therefore not subject to the 100-byte limit.
Ever since I've learned writing programs in COBOL, Assembler or a few other languages many years ago, I have always coded a 100-byte storage area to receive the PARM data area from JCL. That's the way I learnt it because that's the way the interface was originally designed. And I know exactly that each of these programs would malfunction in some way or other, if suddenly someone began passing more than 100 bytes of data to my programs. Now back to the originally scheduled discussion ... If the SET values do not exist in storage anymore at the time of step execution, perhaps IBM would be so good and consider making them available in some standard interface / method ... CEEENV or ENVAR, as someone else suggested, does sound good to me, too. Regards, Ulrich Krueger -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 13:19 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: JCL parms On Fri, 4 Jan 2008 11:15:57 -0800, Ulrich Krueger wrote: >You know, guys, as much as I'd like to see the JCL PARM expanded in length, >I'd hate to see the problems that will arise from it. Face it, how many of >your programs that process PARM values have a hard-coded 100-byte storage >area to receive the PARM string into? Just about all of them, I bet. > Have you any real data to support your "just about all"? I have never encountered a problem invoking programs (including IBM products) from Rexx ATTCHMVS (assembler CALL would be the same) with PARM>100 chars. Any program which would fail as you suggest with a long EXEC PARM= would likewise fail when invoked by CALL or ATTCHMVS; it's intrinsically broken. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
