On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:01:07 -0800, Charles Mills wrote: > >Nice of IBM to document this. :-( Yes, I know that coding DSN=NULLFILE is >equivalent to coding DUMMY, but it does not follow that coding DUMMY would >necessarily set a DSN of 'NULLFILE'. The words "DUMMY" and "NULLFILE" appear >nowhere in the documentation of the JFCB. > Very irritatingly, however documented, allocation also quietly converts any allocation of "PATH='/dev/null'" to NULLFILE. Irritatating because '/dev/null' (you can fake it with a symlink) has some behaviors distinctly different from NULLFILE (for example in concatenations).
This complexity is needless. I suspect it was added because some irresponsible designer reasoned, "'/dev/null' is somewhat like NULLFILE. We'll replace it with the latter to make it exactly like NULLFILE and satisfy the (unjustified) expectations of legacy MVS users." --gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
