Gil,
OK, thanks. I hadn't considered the "I'm going to because I can" angle, namely
because I'm more of the "why would you even want to do that, even if you can,
it'll cause problems." Kind of guy. But I know the adage, every time somebody
makes something foolproof, the universe comes up with a bigger fool.
Rex
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2020 5:58 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: [External] Re: blanks at the end of Unix file names - was LMINIT
cannot handle concatenation with more than 16 data sets?
On Tue, 29 Sep 2020 21:28:26 +0000, Pommier, Rex wrote:
>
>Serious question - what would be the purpose for doing this? I know you can,
>I'm just trying to grasp a good reason for doing so. Security by obscurity
>(not valid in my mind)?
>
Because it's possible. Someone will do it. Test suites should verify that
other components support it properly. The security needn't be by obscurity.
The security product or ACLs could enforce chosen rules.
To minimize programmer astonishment the syntax and semantics should be uniform
throughout the system. I have a couple experiences older than OMVS.
I used ISPF LM services to create some PDS members with hyphens in their names,
e.g. FOO-BAR. Subsequently I decided to add ISPF statistics to such members
with LMMSTATS. LMMSTATS deems the hyphen a syntax error.
Similarly, I once created a data set such as:
DD DISP=(NEW,CATLG),DSN=hlq.X.FOO-BAR
No problem. Later, I tried
DD DISP=(NEW,CATLG),DSN=hlq.Y.FOO-BAR,
DCB=hlq.X.FOO-BAR
Again, the hyphen caused a syntax error. The restriction is documented, but
why not be uniform?
As long as STOW and BLDL have existed they have supported mixed-case member
names. But most high-level user interfaces aren't even case-insensitive: they
don't find any member name containing lower case characters. An IBM employee
has said on this list that those names are invalid. But why doesn't STOW
report them as errors.
I disagree with Emerson about consistency.
><stripped from the other thread>
>
>Alas, the padding and stripping mean that 'WOMBAT', 'WOMBAT ', and 'WOMBAT
>',
>distinct UNIX files, would be conflated.
-- gil
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