Paul, For QSAM, there's F/FS/FB/FBS, U, V/VB, VS/VBS that you may see used in a business system (and business systems, in the main, are the reasons for having a Mainframe).
All have their specific "it's better in this case to do this". Of these, VS/VBS is the slowest way to read or write records, and the least likely that you will see, and the least "known" to programmers, in business systems. "Slowest" means, for large numbers of records (the usual stuff of Mainframe business systems) "more expensive" and "running longer". Neither of these are good. I've seen you suggest that things would be better with VS/VBS only: can you outline how, please? QSAM has limits. You seem to be unable to accept that. It has the limits it has, not the limits that you think it should have. It ain't gonna change. If for your "more and more mysterious" your point is "why didn't it abend, rather than apparently work, although work other than I wanted", then raise it with IBM. I'm not sure it will get a high priority, because mostly people will be expected to respect the limits. Since you are very much at home with HFS, why don't you use that, and just pretend that it is giving you VS/VBS? Won't that make you happy, and leave everyone else choosing the most effective RECFM for the specific task (or not, as it has been known to happen)? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
