John (and Elardus)

I think the users saw this in a 1.12 manual and thought it was something new 
they should be concerned about.
I'll go back to them and tell them to worry about more important things :)
Thanks for your help

Regards and thanks
Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of John Eells
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 2:29 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: DFSORT and FREE=CLOSE

Beesley, Paul wrote:
> Hi
> Quick query about use of FREE=CLOSE in DFSORT JCL Some of our users 
> have FREE=CLOSE on the SYSOUT statements in their DFSORT JCL and they have 
> read that FREE=CLOSE is not allowed from 1.12 upwards.
> What actually happens if FREE=CLOSE is specified now? Is it ignored? Does the 
> job fail? Or something else?
> (This customer is 1.11 currently and we will be upgrading to 1.13 
> shortly so they are concerned about having to make a lot of JCL 
> changes)


My first thought when I read this was, "How on earth did we miss seeing that 
migration action in our reviews?"  But in the z/OS V1.9 DFSORT Application 
Programming Guide and later editions, I see this same statement under topic 
2.4, "Using DD Statements":

"2. When using DFSORT applications, FREE=CLOSE cannot be used on any DD 
statements except DFSPARM."

And the z/OS V2.1 JCL Reference still documents FREE=CLOSE as valid, and a 
quick test on a 2.1 system shows that it's still accepted.

So...what led your users think this is a new restriction?  (It seems as though 
we might have to fix something, somewhere, but what?)

--
John Eells
z/OS Technical Marketing
IBM Poughkeepsie
[email protected]

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