On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 21:59:32 -0500, Paul Gilmartin <[email protected]> wrote:
> >(And I still see no good explanation of why data set names beginning >with a period are prohibited, at least by JCL.) > This is just wild speculation on my part, but maybe IBM is considering a future change to the rule for the DSNAME parameter in JCL, in both quoted and unquoted forms, such that a name will be allowed to start with a period. Names that start with a period would be prefixed with the job's userid or a prefix specified separately. It might be that a leading period is not currently allowed even in quoted names so there will not be any existing JCL that would be adversely affected by the future introduction of such a change. SAS already uses this convention for its FILENAME and LIBNAME statements, allowing the user to specify the prefix separately. Google for SAS and SYSPREF. Bill ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
