I would not describe JCL as a programming language anymore than a pom is a language. Maven uses the pom XML to describe actions, dependencies and based on its analysis actually does the execution. Not a great comparison but I think it is consistent with JCL being a set of directives that are interpreted and acted upon as opposed to being an execution engine. I think its does a fine job for what it is for in terms of abstraction of data from programs, allowing serialization via JES and dynamic allocation, etc. It describes a unit of work.
Matt Hogstrom m...@hogstrom.org +1-919-656-0564 PGP Key: 0x90ECB270 Facebook <https://facebook.com/matt.hogstrom> LinkedIn <https://linkedin/in/mhogstrom> Twitter <https://twitter.com/hogstrom> “It may be cognitive, but, it ain’t intuitive." — Hogstrom > On Jan 6, 2022, at 10:05 PM, Andrew Rowley <and...@blackhillsoftware.com> > wrote: > > On 7/01/2022 12:23 pm, David Crayford wrote: >> >> I understand that it's declarative. But it has logic such as IF/THEN. That >> is no reason why it couldn't have been a scripting language like CL on >> AS/400. >> > IF/THEN was a late addition, and is probably one of the biggest problems with > JCL because it doesn't work like IF/THEN in a programming language. IF/THEN > is really a property of the enclosed steps (I suspect it generates the same > thing as equivalent COND statements on the steps) rather than a logical block > in the JCL. > > e.g. from the JCL reference: > > The system processes the following statements regardless of the logic of the > IF/THEN/ELSE/ENDIF > statement construct. They can be placed in a THEN or ELSE clause, but they > are not executed > conditionally. > • PROC and PEND statements > • JES2 and JES3 statements and commands > • JCL command statements > • Comment (//*) statements > • INCLUDE statements > • Delimiter (/*) statements > • Null statements > • SET statements > > The IF/THEN/ELSE/ENDIF statement construct does not conditionally control the > processing of JCL; rather, it conditionally controls the execution of job > steps. > > > -- > Andrew Rowley > Black Hill Software > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
