On Thu, 20 Aug 2015 14:09:48 -0700, Charles Mills wrote:

>cmp requires both files, right? I suspect the problem here is "is the file 
>different today than what it was yesterday?"
> 
If you haven't both files, the optimization of comparing only the VTOCs and the 
first
several records requires that those be saved.

>Interesting point on record lengths. Even RDW hashes don't actually solve the 
>entire (theoretical -- probably not real) problem. What about two FB files 
>with the same bits but different record lengths (e.g., 500 80-byte records 
>versus 1000 40-byte records). They are unarguably different but a hash might 
>yield the same sum for both.
>
I oversimplified here.  In fact, I first converted to RECFM=V so I had RDWs.  
(And my
antagonist on CMS-PIPELINES argued that they are practically *not* different.  
For
some applications his view is correct.)

>Is the requirement exclusively QSAM files? What about VSAM? What about PDS? 
>PDSE? PDS(E) as a whole or member by member? I strongly suspect that unlike 
>for a QSAM file, that if I overwrote a PDSE member with identical data, the 
>hash for the PDSE as a whole would change.
>
You must extract and compare what matters and ignore everything else.  Some
of my co-workers despise "diff" because it has no option to ignore 73-80 which
they regard as (sometimes) inconsequential.  Except when we deliver ++SRC
subject to USERMODs.

-- gil

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

Reply via email to