IBM Mainframe Forum

what does Centwin keyword do in DFSORT?

CENTWIN defines the start of a century window for determining whether a 2 digit year is considered as 19xx or 20xx. This provided companies with 2 digit years in their data to sort correctly.

CENTWIN=1975 says the century window begins in 1975. Thus year '74' is sorted as if it were '2074' while '75' is sorted as '1975'.

There is also a "sliding-window' option so the window advances year by year. CENTWIN=20 says the window began 20 years ago from now.

CENTWIN is an alias for DFSORT's Y2PAST option which is used to set the "century window" you want to use with DFSORT's Y2x formats. You can find complete information on DFSORT's Y2PAST option and the Y2x formats in "z/OS DFSORT Application Programming Guide" which you can access online from:

http://www.ibm.com/systems/support/stor ... tmpub.html