The obvious problem here is that the manuals specify that SYSLRACF returns the RACF level [as a character string], but give zero guidance about valid ways to interpret or use the value. If this will always be the suffix of an FMID AND the rules for RACF FMID assignment guarantee that comparing as character-encoded hexadecimal values will always sort later releases higher, then that ought to have been explicitly stated.
The problem with unfreezing SYSLRACF is the possibility of breaking existing code using other comparison techniques that worked prior to level "77A0". It would seem that there are several plausible choices at this point: (1) Fix the documentation to be specific about valid usage of SYSLRACF and warn of future "unfreeze" of SYSLRACF to reflect true FMID, fix any mis-use in IBM code, and require installations to fix any installation misuse as part of some future migration. (2) Keep SYSLRACF as-is and introduce a new SYSVAR for true RACF FMID suffix with well defined usage rules, and require any new code needing to verify RACF at a level of "77A0" or above to use the new variable and the explicitly-stated comparison rules. or, if there is no rule that FMID suffixes taken as a hex value always increase in later product releases, (3) introduce a new SYSVAR that returns some kind of RACF level set # guaranteed to increase sequentially for later releases and require that future code compare with that for determining availability of features at "77A0" and beyond. It could still be useful to have a SYSVAR with the true RACF FMID suffix, even if that is not the best thing to test to determine available features. Joel C. Ewing On 6/24/21 2:38 PM, Paul Gilmartin wrote: > On Mon, 21 Jun 2021 14:35:46 -0700, Charles Mills wrote: > >> Did you read the doc? They are concerned because 77A0 will character compare >> low to 7790 and mess up peoples' logic. Seems to me if you do character >> compares on hex data you get what you deserve, but I don't make up the rules. >> > Errr ... > "77A0" < "7790" (EBCDIC) > "77A0" > "7790" (ASCII) > > Do they need to specify the CCSID? (I believe DFSORT provides such an > option.) > > The doc is probably ASCII-centric. > > -- gil > > ... -- Joel C. Ewing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
