We need some distinctions here. A PDS member containing a source program or an object module is not different internally from a 'flat file' containing the same card images. Such a member can be read by BSAM or QSAM
A PDS member containing a load module has a very different, hybrid makeup comprised of an unholy mixture of text for loading and channel-program fragments used in loading this text into and initializing other blocks of storage within an in-storage load module. A load-module image is not simply relocated in memory with ADCONs appropriately incremented. Very complex processing of a mixture of text and control information is performed. A PDSE member containing a program object has a very different, and very sketchily documented, mixed internal structure. Moreover, the loading of some of its text elements may be deferred until they are required|requested. BPAM, which reads both with different expectations for each, is not equipped to read flat files; and neither BSAM nor QSAM can make any sense of either a load-module PDS member or a very differently organized program-object PDSE member. Paul Gilmartin's question, | Why couldn't the same information [a program | object] be stored in a PDS? thus misses the mark. Shmuel Metz's response to that question, | Because a PDS member doesn'y have the | right structure. is of course correct or "so nearly so as makes no difference", but it is not really very responsive. I am reminded of Moliere's physician who, asked how sleeping draughts functioned, replied that their effectiveness was due to their dormitive powers. That said, I can feel considerable sympathy for Shmuel's response if he judged, as I do, that Paul's question was at least in part tendentious. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
