ENQ and overrides come to mind.
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of David Crayford [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 6, 2022 8:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ... Re: Top 8 Reasons for using Python instead of REXX for z/OS On 7/1/22 9:03 am, Andrew Rowley wrote: > On 7/01/2022 11:37 am, David Crayford wrote: > >>> Isn't JCL already a really good tool for what it does? >> >> Maybe, but it's a terribly designed language. I worked on AS/400 >> boxes in the 90s and the Control Language (CL) was a legit Turing >> complete program language. Why couldn't JCL have been the same? >> > > I think it is a mistake to think of JCL as a program language. It is a > language that defines what to run and the environment to run it in. So > it is better compared to XML, JSON etc or even a makefile than e.g. > shell scripts. 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. > > The syntax is poor, admittedly, I think as a result of having evolved > over time rather than developing a strict definition at the start. It > would probably be possible to write a new interpreter and replace JCL > with XML or JSON without losing any functionality - if it is the > syntax that bothers you. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
