RE: FTP Format

From my example, bin caused me grief; asc was preferred.

If they are sending it to you in the format
This is a file,01.12,the walrus is dead
then how the blazes do you expect to get that into a multi column file by
going directly to the qsys.lib file system? FTP will not break it up
based on the commas. You'll have to transition it. Either by a stream
file or by the old S/36 type of one column file. In theory the CPYFRMIMPF
command would work. But that theory doesn't account for IBM changing it
on a whim every release, or, the customer sending you data that doesn't
fit. Using the above sample data for example, and your predefined table
had these columns:
MY5ACOL
MY7DOT1DEC
MY7ACOL
You'll get a lot of truncation and other errors - normally hard halts. I
had this all the time. Better to be able to individually handle it.
Because when the customer does send you bad data you will be short handed
that week, during month end close, with an auditor on site, after spending
all night bailing your kid out of jail and you just won't have time to
remember how you did it.

First cobol program I wrote in college was to do just this kind of serious
editing and post it to a table.

Rob Berendt