A lot of replies. Thanks all. Let me try to address various comments in a single response.
> You mis-interpreted my intention Sorry. I took "I'd suggest you to simply perform some tests - IMHO it's much better than asking others about it" and "Has it occurred to anyone to just look at the JCL Reference manual?" as a rebuke. My apologies if I was over-paranoid. > English is foreign language for me Your English is certainly better than my Polish and I thank you for being so tolerant of us mono-lingual Americans. > it seems the place to be having this conversation is with IBM I am not alleging any bug in any IBM component. I was simply asking how it worked. I think the whole of "MVS" could use some vast improvements in documentation but that's just IMHO and I don't think IBM would be terribly responsive to my opening a ticket. (And please, save the flames, yes, "MVS" is much better documented than some operating systems.) Ah! I get it. You interpreted my "I have a bug involving the treatment of PDS members" as meaning that I was alleging a bug in "MVS." Nay! By "I have a bug" I meant there is a bug (apparently) in my code. That is, the product is failing at a customer's site and I have no reason to think the bug is other than in my code. I've found the immediate problem. Where my code apparently really should be testing for NEW or MOD it was testing only for MOD, and as JCL apparently populates JFCBIND2 with NEW (x'C0') for both NEW and MOD my code was failing for both cases. I asked about the differences between NEW and MOD because if I was going to change the code I wanted to get it right. SHOULD the code be differentiating between NEW and MOD? (Apparently not.) > I don't find that the MVS documentation is "scattered" ... > I don't recall seeing conflicting or contradictory documentation ... > I'm not sure what you might be referring to. Agreed, on this particular topic, all of the documentation is apparently in one place. But one does not know that, does one? If one is trying to RTFM about how feature X works and one finds a paragraph or a chapter devoted to X, how does one know whether there is additional (or conflicting!) information elsewhere? Particularly if the keywords in question are DISP or NEW or MEMBER which occur with such frequency that a simple search is not useful? > DISP is always for dataset, not for member. That statement is a useful principle to keep in mind but it is not exactly relevant to my question. FOO(BAR),DISP=NEW behaves differently depending on whether or not FOO(BAR) exists. So DISP is always FOR the dataset, but its behavior is affected by the member. (And more specifically, *disposition* (DELETE, CATLG, etc., as opposed to status NEW, MOD, etc.) is always for the dataset, not the member.) Finally, I think some of you just don't appreciate the software vendor sales/support environment. I think many of you if you were dealing with a vendor you would be quick to say "you are asking big bucks for your product. Like it or not, this is how our shop does things. Fix your product or go away!" But somehow when you put on your "advice" hats you think a vendor should be in a position to tell a customer "what you are doing is illogical so fix your logic and THEN buy our product." You may be "right" -- but you wouldn't sell much software (i.e., stay in business and pay your programmers' salaries) if you were a vendor with that approach. Thanks again. Great resource here. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of R.S. Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 5:10 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Difference between DISP=NEW and MOD for a PDS member? Charles, You mis-interpreted my intention. I suggested the tests, because it's IMHO good advice. I think you understand it as "don't bother us with simple questions, you should RTFM or test it!". Yes, it can be understood that way, but *it wasn't my intention*. Please, remember: English is foreign language for me so sometimes some nuances or allusions can be unintentional. I answered because not to say "I know the answer", but because I knew the answer and thought it can be ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
