IBM Mainframe Forum

@Nicc & Robert
Thanks for providing me the guidance. With my novice knowledge i thought comma is for continuation.


Kind regard's
gyaa

Even after reading ALL of Robert's post?

@Nicc,
Ya you are right, the first doubt for me is i am been used only 30columns, so from Robert what i understood is if i exceeded 71 columns inorder to continue i need to have a non blank character , i think non blank character is for space, tab, and enter, so i had just used that.

Kind regard's
gyaa

You have to make the distinction between a statement and a line. A statement may fit on one line or may go over multiple lines - depends on the program that is going to read that statement. If it allows a statement to go over multpile lines then it may require an indicator to let it know that this is happening. A trailing comma may mean that a final optional part of the statement has not been coded - although it would be wiser in that case to omit the trailing comma. That is why some programs require the non-blank in col. 72. It varies from program to program. The older the program the more likely you are to need it as they were written when memory was small (less than what you may have in your mobile phone!) so short-cuts such as the continuation marker exist.

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gowthamgyaa (Thu Oct 04, 2012 10:10 pm)

Hello,

When one is new (or even not new), the "old" utilities can be a pain. They were very strictly implemented. And not necessarily with the "same rules". Many people (everyone i work with) have working samples and simply clone them as needed or have tools that genereate the jcl and control statements - if they are even going to use the old utilities.

Fortunately, other than IDCAMS, developers do not have to use these very often. Unfortunately, you are struggling with IDCAMS

Good luck and plan on some frustration until this becomes more familiar.

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gowthamgyaa (Thu Oct 04, 2012 10:12 pm)

gowthamgyaa wrote:@Nicc & Robert
Thanks for providing me the guidance. With my novice knowledge i thought comma is for continuation.


Kind regard's
gyaa

You have to have the comma (,) there. though the comma does not imply continuation by itself.

The syntax of the IEHPROGM, IEHLIST and IEHMOVE control statements is roughly similar to the JCL syntax in early OS/360 releases. It is a mystery to me why IBM didn't relax the syntax at about the same time (1969 or thereabout) they relaxed the syntax in OS/360 JCL,

@steve
Thank you for your kind reply steve.
If comma should be there, what might be the error in the above statement, can u kindly guide me in this.


Kind regards
gyaa

Hello,

Without going back over everything, i suspect you need to put an X in pos 72 of the line(s) to be continued. . . As has been explained before. I use X - any non-blank may work.

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gowthamgyaa (Fri Oct 05, 2012 2:36 pm)

The JCL in your original post is given again here:as you have been REPEATEDLY told, the line starting " RENAME" (the sixth line of the post) must have a non-blank character in column 72. This character is used to denote that the next line is a continuation of the current line and this is the ONLY way you can denote a continuation line in the IEHPROGM utility.

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gowthamgyaa (Fri Oct 05, 2012 2:36 pm)

I learned how to use these programs in 1968 or 1969 by Reading The F*** Manual. We have been kind enough to give you the manual title. It is up to you to locate the manual and read it yourself. We are not here to do that for you, especially since it is clear you are not illiterate. You will not be successful, either as a student or as a professional in this career if you are unable or unwilling to do this for yourself. RTFM.