I do agree with all the posts that you should not do a LOAD in an exit. I'll quibble about the very title of this post. I'd say that there is no such thing as an external dsect. A dsect is just a mapping. What you are talking about is simply an external CSECT of DC's for which you provide a DSECT to map.
The OP of course knows how to initialize a csect. A DSECT could be used to help guide where the DC's go if wanted (such as by using ORG the_start+the_field_in_the_dsect). And of course the DSECT would be used to interpret the CSECT. If you're going to go the route of an initialized CSECT that a customer assembles, then you should probably provide a macro within the CSECT so that the customer is updating the macro (and the macro knows how to set the fields). Once the CSECT is initialized, there is only the question of whether it is bound with your code (and thus addressable by v-con) or is located dynamically by your code. Peter Relson z/OS Core Technology Design ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
