>Well, the way I see it, they had a whole lot of different modules >reading PARMLIB that they needed to convert to using system symbols. >The use of a substitution routine that did not cause the record to >be extended, this probably save an enormous amount of work.
You see very clearly. That is exactly why the restriction exists. With this restriction, for example, the IEFPRMLB service can read and symbolically substitute a parmlib member and return the data to the caller. And the caller hneeds no knowledge of whether symbol substitution was done or needs to be done. Without it, each program user would have to do the substitution itself. >Nothing currently working would break ... until you change a >symbol's value to something longer than the symbol name. But since the whole discussion is related to allowing a symbol value longer than a symbol name, this doesn't say much. Once a customer does create symbols with value longer than the symbol name, otherwise-syntactically-correct lines will no longer parse correctly as soon as (for example) a parmlib line exceeds 71 characters, or a JCL line 72 characters. By the way, anyone can create their own symbol table and use the ASASYMBM service to do substitution. There are no length limitations on your own symbols. Peter Relson z/OS Core Technology Design ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
