On 9/19/2013 6:05 PM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
By analogy, unless you create at least one record in a PS data set, what good is it? Therefore, DSN=NULLFILE is pointless.
I suspect that there are some programmers who will disagree with that. At a minimum, DSN=NULLFILE, unlike a plain DD DUMMY, can be used to carry more JFCB information to a program (volsers, DCBs, etc.). I use this when a program may allocate a file dynamically, and the DSORG and size are determined during execution.
And depending on your definition, an EOF is a record (it may have a non-zero key length, thus carry information).
I have occasionally created empty PDSes (usually temporary) to use in overriding concatenations. If there are no members, it's silly to require that there be directory blocks.
A number of programs, including IEBCOPY, will refuse to operate unless they find a high-value entry.
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, Vermont ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
