Re: Validity Checking Programs

["Mark S. Waterbury" <mark.s.waterbury@xxxxxxx>]

Hi, Jonathan:

I think VCPs might not be the best approach for this purpose. For 
example, they are invoked when you prompt a command in a CL program 
inside SEU -- or whenever SEU decides to "syntax-check" your CL source 
-- so perhaps this might not be what you intended.

I suggest you look at the excellent free open-source COMPILE (make) tool 
by Alan Campin, available here:

   http://www.think400.dk/downloads.htm

This tool allows you to place those special parameter overrides on 
create commands directly within the source member for those objects that 
need it. That way, it never gets "lost" or forgotten, etc. -- this is 
the "right way" to solve this problem, in my opinion.  And, you can use 
Alan's COMPILE command from any command line, from PDM (via a 
user-defined option) or from within WDSCi. ;-)

Sincerely,

Mark S. Waterbury

> Jonathan Mason wrote:
> I'm in the process of trying to write a utility that will capture which
> parameters were specified when a command was executed so that they can be
> reused as defaults the next time the command is run for the same object.
> For example, when using the CRTPGM command for some objects I may have
> binding directories specified, whilst for others I may list the service
> programs and modules separately.
>
> I thought about using Validity Checking Programs (VCP) assigned to the
> particular commands that would log the parameters used in a database, but
> this has raised a number of questions:
>
> a)	The documentation says that the parameters for the VCP need to be in
> the same sequence as the  Command Processing Program (CPP), however there's
> no documentation anywhere on the parameters accepted by any given CPP.  I
> can prompt the command and see the available parameters, but there's nothing
> to say that - for example - whether OUTPUT(*PRINT) passes "*PRINT" or "1" or
> anything else to the CPP.  I have found that by specifying two parameters
> for a VCP, the first of 4 characters followed by a 1024 characters I can
> substring the second parameter to find the details by trial and error.  Does
> anybody know if there is any documentation anywhere that shows what the
> CPP's are expecting?
> 	
> b)	Secondly, when I assign a test VCP to a command the VCP only runs
> when I prompt the command and press Enter.  Is this the correct behaviour
> for a VCP?  I would have expected it to run every time the command is
> executed.
>
> c)	Are there any API's that return compile time information?  If, for
> example, I compare the DSPMOD output with the QBNRMODI system API there are
> a lot pieces of information missing from the API output.
>
> Thanks
>
> Jonathan
>