>>If the data that Charles is processing contains paragraphs without intervening blank lines, all the paragraphs will be flowed together, not likely what he wants. Also, he mentioned that some of the lines are several thousand bytes long.
Tom, DFSORT has resize operator which can split long records into short records and merge the short records into long records. So as you mentioned Text flow needs a blank to work with, but DFSORT doesn't need one. Here is a sample. The only requirement is that the input dataset need to have RECFM=FB //STEP0100 EXEC PGM=ICETOOL //TOOLMSG DD SYSOUT=* //DFSMSG DD SYSOUT=* //IN DD DISP=SHR,DSN=Your Long FB Lrecl file //OUT DD DSN=Your FB 72 byte file, // DISP=(NEW,CATLG,DELETE), // SPACE=(CYL,(X,Y),RLSE) //TOOLIN DD * RESIZE FROM(IN) TO(OUT) TOLEN(72) /* For those who want to test it out here is a sample job which will create 1 long record of 1872 bytes and then will use resize to split the 1 record into multiple records of 72 bytes each. //**************************************************************** //* CREATE 1 RECORD WITH ALL THE ALPHABETS EACH REPEATED 72 TIMES* //* 26 X 72 = 1872 LRECL * //**************************************************************** //STEP0100 EXEC PGM=SORT //SYSOUT DD SYSOUT=* //SORTIN DD * ABC //SORTOUT DD DSN=&&LONGREC,DISP=(,PASS),SPACE=(CYL,(1,1),RLSE) //SYSIN DD * OPTION COPY INREC BUILD=(72C'A', 72C'B', 72C'C', 72C'D', 72C'E', 72C'F', 72C'G', 72C'H', 72C'I', 72C'J', 72C'K', 72C'L', 72C'M', 72C'N', 72C'O', 72C'P', 72C'Q', 72C'R', 72C'S', 72C'T', 72C'U', 72C'V', 72C'W', 72C'X', 72C'Y', 72C'Z') //* //**************************************************************** //* SPLIT THE 1872 LRECL FILE INTO 72 BYTE LRECL USING RESIZE * //**************************************************************** //STEP0200 EXEC PGM=ICETOOL //TOOLMSG DD SYSOUT=* //DFSMSG DD SYSOUT=* //IN DD DISP=SHR,DSN=&&LONGREC //OUT DD SYSOUT=* //TOOLIN DD * RESIZE FROM(IN) TO(OUT) TOLEN(72) /* The output from this job is 26 records with each record having 72 characters Further if you have any questions please let me know Thanks, Kolusu DFSORT Development IBM Corporation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN