Re: JCL(?) question

["Dan Bale" <dbale@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just wanted to clarify a few things from previous posts on this subject:

>>This expression substitutes the actual number of data records in a
database file; and has several cases where 00000000 may be substituted.
They are:
  The file does not exist.
  The file does not have any members.
  The file is allocated exclusively to another job.
  The file is a job (RETAIN-J) file.                              <<

Just to make this clear, these cases refer to the file that you're getting the
number of records from, _not_ the file you're trying to create.

>>blah!  i always hated it when someone did that at our shop, it invited
trouble! (used the records-?F'A stuff).  If you change the A to an S, it
is the allocated size, rather than the actual size.<<

Unfortunately, the use of ?F'S,xxxx' has the potential to return the number of
BLOCKS (not records), it depends on how the file was created.  On the S/36, you
could create a file specifying an initial size of either blocks or records.  For
Stephanie's knowledge, is this still an issue with the S/36 environment on the
AS/400?

This is why I always used ?F'A,xxxx'.  Depending on the application, I would
either test the value to decide whether to run a program:

// IF ?F'A,xxxx'? = 0 GOTO BYPASS

or I would evaluate it to a parameter and add 1 to it (an example would be to
print an "empty" exception report; no exceptions, but still want to print report
stating so):

// EVAL P64=?F'A,xxxx'?+1
then,
// LOAD ABC123
// FILE NAME-INPUT,LABEL-XXXX
// FILE NAME-OUTPUT,LABEL-ZZZZ,RECORDS-?64?
// RUN

Boy, am I glad those days are over!





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