On Tue, 29 Sep 2020, at 23:57, Paul Gilmartin wrote: > 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 JCL supports weird dsnames (eg those of tape datasets, perhaps from foreign OSes) provided they are in quotes, would those lines have been ok if the DCB= value was quoted? > As long as STOW and BLDL have existed they have supported > mixed-case member names. Long ago I'm fairly sure I saw possibly not just mixed-case, but every possible character in use in member names of (I think) the SMPMTS, or if not that, one of the other internal SMP/E PDSes. IIRC, SMP/E was just using an incrementing binary counter to create successive 'member names' for storing things. It worked fine - for SMP/E itself - but wasn't something one could work with via ISPF. But then again, one didn't need to. > 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. Well they weren't invalid back then. -- Jeremy Nicoll - my opinions are my own. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
