I didn't bother to reply to Mr Crayford's post; he seems to be saying that he encounters no editing task nowadays that he can't do just as well manually as if he wrote an editing program. I can't take that seriously. (No offense intended; I may have misunderstood.)
Mr Nicoll got me thinking about it in more detail. I have an ISPF Edit macro I use all the time (I named it XP for "expand") that I can point to a particular line number in my JCL; it'll find the DSN on that line number and throw me into a View session of it. No more highlighting and copying the DSN, then splitting the screen and starting a View menu; just "XP 13" and I'm looking at the DS. There's an option that will copy the dataset into the JCL instead of putting a View session over it, and others that will browse or edit the dataset instead of view it. And then, of course, following Scott Adams' dictum, I had to teach it other things; why stop at DD DSN=? The same Edit macro can (usually) find a DSN in my REXX code, a copybook member named in a COBOL statement, a PROC named in an EXEC statement and anything else I take it into my head to teach it. (There are some tasks that are so common that many REXX programmers automate them, reïnventing the wheel over and over. I don't understand why this isn't one of them.) --- By the way, what in y'all's opinion is the proper use of the word "macro"? I hear the term "Excel macro" all the time, for example, but how is it not, simply, a program? My own idea (not worth very much, but it is my own) is that a macro is a series of commands, such as we used to have in the old DOS .bat language. But as soon as the syntax starts allowing for IF and GOTO statements, it's no longer a macro; it's a program. I still write "ISPF Edit macro", just to match the documentation. But it isn't a macro; it's a program, n'est-ce pas? --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* Marriage is an act of will, divorce an act of won't. -screenwriter Josh Greenfeld */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jeremy Nicoll Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2021 14:44 A typical macro I have here gets used when I download a telephone bill. The data arrives here as a table of numbers called, call durations, dates etc. The macro does a certain amount of syntax checking, so that it will fail sensibly if the phone company change the format of their data file. It then reformats it, grouping calls per destination, summing the costs for each destination, and also inserting textual descriptions of the numbers called (ie people's names, company names etc). I do not think a macro recording and playback approach would work. There is a lot of logic in the Kexx/Rexx aspect of the macro, apart from the editor commands that get issued. My longest macro is just over 12,500 lines long.... --- On Thu, 28 Jan 2021, at 07:58, David Crayford wrote: > I can't remember the last time I had to write a macro as I can do the things I need just using commands. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
