On 12/08/2013 12:24 PM, Gerhard Postpischil wrote: > On 12/8/2013 12:52 PM, John McKown wrote: >> Agree. I have not checked, but will bat this is really a full word >> integer >> binary number. > > Minor nit - DD= specifies a halfword. > > > Gerhard Postpischil > Bradford, Vermont
Which perfectly makes the point that a manual which refers to this parameter value as "hexadecimal", while perhaps trivially true, is also uselessly imprecise. This should not be allowed in a well-edited manual. The z-Arch PoOp describes many, many data formats used in the many contexts of z/OS architecture, all of which data is ultimately stored in some combination of bytes -- and any byte content may be represented or described using either binary or hex notation. So to say a parameter may point to a hexadecimal value, while perhaps true, is totally ambiguous. If the real requirement is that the parameter address must point to a location containing what the PoOp describes as a half-word binary value, then the manual should state precisely that. I have seen some functional routines that are clever enough to automatically detect the difference between multiple parameter formats, say between a binary value versus an EBCDIC character value, and behave accordingly, but this is only plausible in specific instances. Typically only one specific data format is expected, that format must be supplied, and the documentation should reflect that requirement. -- Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
