It is a pet peeve of mine. People use "hex" sloppily to mean "binary" (what I
think IBM means in your example) or "non-printable" ("does it look like a DD
name?" "Nyah, it's a bunch of hex.").
Hex is not a kind of data. It is a convenient way of representing data. X'F1'
is a clearer image in most cases than 11110001 or 241. All data is potentially
hex; that is, is representable in hex. That's the beauty of hex.
Charles
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2013 2:53 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: "hexadecimal"?
From:
Title: z/OS V1R13.0 DFSMSdfp Advanced Services
Document Number: SC26-7400-14
... that I was reading lately:
7.5.3.1 TRKCALC--Standard Form
...
DD=addr--RX-type address, (2-12), (0), (14), or n
You can specify either the address of a field containing the
hexadecimal value of the record's data length, ...
Hexadecimal!? Does this mean the value must be coded as hexadecimal display,
e.g. C'50' to indicate 80? Or must it be coded as a hexadecimal self-defining
term (X'50')? Why not a decimal self-defining term (80)?
Or a binary self-defining term (B'01010000')? Or even an A()-constant
(AL2(100-20))?
Is "hexadecimal" otiose? Is it time for an RCF?
(I've seen other uses of "hexadecimal" that I find otiose in MVS documentation.
I suspect a tech writer's mother was traumatized during gestation by
hexadecimal notation.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
