For initial testing and debugging, I like:
DC X'00xx' where 'nn' is a unique number. I get a blow-up and by looking at the instruction in the dump, I know which condition I hit without thinking.

Tony Thigpen

Charles Mills wrote on 05/11/2017 01:44 PM:
What is *wrong* with DC H'0'? It has the advantage of being incredibly straightforward. I 
had to spend a minute thinking about J *+2; I pretty much guarantee you anyone with six 
months of HLASM experience would "get" DC H'0'.

I don't write much assembler anymore but if I did I think I might define a bunch of 
error situation equates in the 0 < value < 256 range:

Blowup_no_input EQU 1
Blowup_invalid_parm EQU 2
Etc.

Then one could code

       DC  Y(Blowup_no_input)

And it would (a.) be somewhat self-documenting in the source code and (b.) 
would more or less diagnose itself in a dump.

And if 255 were not enough codes, one could go to 16 million+ with DC 
FL4(Blowup_whatever).

Frankly, I use DC H'0 very infrequently, usually only temporarily ("I can't possibly be going through this code, 
could I?"). If is a "real" error then it should have a "real" termination with messages, a 
return code, a user ABEND, whatever is appropriate to the context, but something better than a S0C1/S0C3/S0C7. Three 
years from now if our support crew gets a call reporting a S0C1/S0C3/S0C7 are they going to have a clue? But if we 
staked out a user ABEND number that we always used then they could go "aha!" and look up the reason code.

Charles


-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [mailto:ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On 
Behalf Of John McKown
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 10:24 AM
To: ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Performance of Decimal Floating Point Instruction

On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 12:12 PM, Paul Gilmartin < 
00000014e0e4a59b-dmarc-requ...@listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

On 2017-05-11, at 06:34, Charles Mills wrote:

If you need a way to ABEND, use the proper LE service, or an
assembler
routine. Anything else will bite you sooner or later.

AMEN!

No more "DC H'0'"


​My current favorite is : J *+2 which results in a S0C1, since it is now 
guaranteed that x'00' will _never_ be used as a valid opcode. It replaces my 
previous favorite of: EX * which is an S0C3.


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