On Sat, 7 Oct 2023 18:42:42 +0000, Farley, Peter wrote:
>I’ll admit I have NOT used symbol substitution in the “name” part (left of the
>“=”) at all, only on the right (value) side, so the true answer is “I don’t
>know”. Never had a reason to use substitution in the “name” part.
>
However infrequently it's done, it should be documented and behave as
documented.
If the effect is to "Determine Equivalent JCL" then perform the operation, no
more
explanation is needed.
I find 16 uses of "unpredictable" in the JCL Ref., with the caveat:
Chapter 4. Syntax of parameters
Note: You must follow the syntax rules in coding job control statements to
achieve
specific results. If you do not follow the rules, you may get error
messages or
unpredictable results. IBM does not support the use of statements or parame
I fear "unpredictable" is too often the writers' excuseo when they don't know
the answer to a request for clarification and can't find out.
>I also have never had reason/need to use JCL continuation for the “value” part
>of a symbol definition, all my symbols have fairly short values.
>
My concern about continuation relates not only to SET/PROC/EXEC, but to
any JCL statement where symbol substitution might change the content of
column 73. Since symbols can't be continued (bad design), I couldn't simply
generate a long command string and break it into 71-column chunks.
--
gil
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