On 1/27/2014 9:03 PM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jan 2014 20:10:04 -0500, Gerhard Postpischil wrote:
On 1/27/2014 8:03 PM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
A matter of opinion, of course. If I had cautiously coded "PARM='&WOMBAT._1'",
I would be protected from the hypothetical change, but get a changed
behavior if I left &WOMBAT undefined. I think from the beginning the
JCL R/C (whatever) should have made reference to an undefined symbol
an error.
That wouldn't have been palatable, as your undefined symbol would have
been valid as a temporary data set name. As today, a temporary may have
I could have defined it.
one or two ampersands, and it's way too late to change that. It might
have made more sense to use a different character, e.g., a percent sign,
to introduce variables (but clashing with the PROC convention).
Sure, but couldn't it have been done right five decades ago, if only
the designers hadn't been too stressed by deadlines to think clearly.
By experiment, what you say is true. I'm considerably surprised.
So, then, why do I get:
8 //DDFOUR DD DISP=(,PASS),DSN=&&&&FOUR,UNIT=SYSALLDA,SPACE=(1,0)
STMT NO. MESSAGE
8 IEFC627I INCORRECT USE OF AMPERSAND IN THE DSN FIELD
By JCL rules, two ampersands represent one ampersand, so four ampersands
represent two ampersands, and "&&FOUR" is a valid temp DSN.
Huh? & is not a recognized construct in JCL; that's HTML (and some
other places). Even if you uppercased it, &&&& simply doesn't
mean anything. Now, the message may be less than clear, but that's
almost to be expected in JCL.
ObEmerson?
I hate JCL!
Along with EBCDIC. We know.
But you are a strong supporter of z/OS in general, I believe.
Keep fighting the good fight to fix what's fixable.
-Steve
-- gil
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