For BSAM, WRITE points to a physical record and the BDW is your responsibility. Carriage control is the ninth byte.
For QSAM, PUT points to a logical record and the RDW is your responsibility, but the access method handles the BDW under the covers. Carriage control is the fifth byte. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Jon Perryman <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, January 1, 2026 10:07 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Question on RECFM=VBA External Message: Use Caution On Thu, 1 Jan 2026 21:07:31 -0500, Joseph Reichman <[email protected]> wrote: >So first comes the BDW for 4 bytes It's been many years but if I remember correctly the BDW (Block Descriptor word) is not your responsibility and is maintained internally by write. >then comes next 4 bytes RDW While the RDW is 4 bytes, it is 2 bytes containing the length followed by x'0000'. >The 9 th byte would then be the control character The 5th byte is a carriage control character which has meaning to the printer. >If I move a 0 to BDW+8 it should space 2 lines >before writting the record No spacing occurs at write. Instead, the "0" will be the first byte of the record you are writing. >going to ISPF browse doesn’t seem that way as >the record appears right after ******** TOP OF DATA ***** I'm guessing that by "the record", you mean the first snap output line. I'm guessing that you placed x'00000001' in your BDW field which would be processed as the RDW where the length = 0 (first 2 bytes). Essentially an empty record. Even if you had x'00010000', realize the first byte of your rdw is x'00' and ISPF should show you a ".". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
