IBM Mainframe Forum

Hi

How do I read RDF to get the length of each record present in the VSAM file?

Thanks
Prasanna G.

Are you wanting to do this in REXX, COBOL, PL/I, Assembler, FORTRAN, SAS, or what? Generally, you don't access the RDF as there are other ways to get the record length, depending upon the language being used.

If you do decide to do this, reading the Using Data Sets manual in the DFSMS bookshelf will give you the format for the RDF -- and depending upon your data you may have to look at bits in the RDF.

Through Cobol..

In COBOL, you can specify a variable in the FD that will contain the length of the record after a READ is done. See RECORD IS VARYING ... DEPENDING ON in the Enterprise COBOL Language Reference manual.