That would be a very significant and useful addition to SORT capabilities from
either vendor.
There are "gotcha's" though, like when the COBOL copy book written by the
programmer uses illegal COBOL strings to allow REPLACE of the high-level part
of the data names in the definition file/member, like this:
01 :HLN:-RECORD-AREA.
05 :HLN:-FIELD-1 PIC X(10).
05 :HLN:-FIELD-2 PIC S9(5)V9(2) COMP-3.
Use of a direct-copybook-read process would require (like the COBDFSYM process
requires a dummy program compile) some other process or parameters to expand
any required REPLACE strings, or a separate "sort" copy of the definition with
all REPLACE strings already resolved.
Not to say it cannot be programmed (SMOP), but definitely a factor to be
considered.
Plus once COBOL is supported, what about assembler DSECTS, PL/1 DECLARE's, C
struct's and typedef's? I'm sure users of those languages would also want that
kind of support. That gets really complex really quickly.
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Clark Morris
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2015 11:19 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Syncsort question: Why do I get error RDW NOT INCLUDED?
On 22 Oct 2015 08:09:23 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote:
>It can. See sort docs on the SYMNAMES input DD for the sort (either Syncsort
>or DFSORT), and IBM (well, actually I think it was Frank Yeager or one of his
>close cohorts) provided us with a nice Rexx tool to convert COBOL copy books
>to SYMNAMES input.
>
>ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/storage/dfsort/mvs/cobdfsym.txt
>
>Search for COBDFSYM on the web to see more information and IBM-MAIN postings
>about it. The only drawback is that it expects compiler listing output from
>Enterprise COBOL 4.1, so we will certainly need an update to that tool when we
>move to COBOL 5.x.
Syncsort for HP-UX read the COBOL record definition. Unfortunately SYNCSORT
manuals aren't available online.
Clark Morris
>
>There is also a small trove of interesting SORT papers and examples here:
>
>http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=114&uid=isg3T7000097
>
>HTH
>
>Peter
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]]
>On Behalf Of Clark Morris
>Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2015 11:03 PM
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: Syncsort question: Why do I get error RDW NOT INCLUDED?
>
>On 21 Oct 2015 15:57:42 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote:
>
><Snipped>
>Why can't COBOL record descriptions be used like they could in SYNCSORT
>for HP-UX in 2002?
>
>Clark Morris
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