>>Does that symbol substitution service indicate, via a return code, that
it
>>failed to find a definition for the symbol?
>No
Somewhat incorrect. But you do have to ask for it. And keep in mind that
there could be any number of symbols if you don't control the input.
So "the symbol" is a valid thought only if you know that there is exactly
one symbol in the input.
In ASASYMBT:
SYMBTWARNNOSUB EQU X'20' When no substitution at all has occurred, *
produce a warning return code.
similarly SYMBT1WARNNOSUB.
*03* 16
*03* Meaning: Warning. When WarnNoSub was specified, the
* substitution process encountered no symbols for
* which to substitute.
* The substitution processing completed normally.
*03* Action: None required.
>I don't like ASASYMBM much either :-)
Care to provide a helpful comment about in what ways it does not meet your
needs?
You are welcome to bash all you like, but without specifics doing so is
unproductive.
The service is admittedly primitive. It meets our needs.
>I wonder why would someone pass a symbol table to this service
>to have it substitute values for you?
Not everything to be substituted for is "system symbol". If you have
additional or even alternate symbols then you'd have to inform the service
what those other symbols are so that it can do the substitution. If you're
wondering why not just do the substitution yourself, I doubt that you'd
bother dealing with all the cases that ASASYMBM handles.
You can also provide this symbol table operand to provide flags to direct
the processing (such as WarnNoSub) even if there are no additional
symbols.
But I still would like to know why/when/if it is important to a program if
a particular symbol is (or is not) defined. Obviously to someone creating
a string for evaluation it is important to know what symbols are available
to be used. Customers don't seem to have a problem knowing that.
Peter Relson
z/OS Core Technology Design
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