On Fri, Nov 13, 2020 at 3:35 PM Andrew Rowley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 14/11/2020 12:54 am, Kirk Wolf wrote: > > > The new commands (getpds and putpds) use BPAM+BSAM along with our > existing > > Co:Z record <-> stream processing framework to allow you to copy PDS > > members to and from z/OS UNIX files. Also included are extensive options > > for ISPF stats processing. > > > > Nice work. I have immediate uses for it. > > One question, I see the options: > > rdw > preceed lines with a four byte IBM-style RDW, consisting of a two byte > network order (big endian) length, followed by two bytes of zeros. > > l4 > preceed lines with a four byte network order (big endian) length of the > record that follows. Note: Unlike the rdw option, this length value does > not include the size of the length field. > > If you are looking at a file, how would you know whether the length > field is included in the record length? > If you were reading a UNIX file, you would need to know whether it had IBM-style RDWs, or l4 (which is compatible with FILEDATA=RECORD) > > The common practice seems to be that the length value in the RDW > includes the length of the RDW itself. This is observed by other > products e.g. FTP. Is there a reason to have the option to exclude the > RDW length? > > -l rdw has a length that includes the 4-byte RDW length, compatible with IBM FYI - the "fromdsn" and "todsn" commands also have these options, but they read or write a single data set. > The whole RDW/record length concept causes a lot of confusion - even it > seems in IBM. Requiring people to choose what type of length field will > add to the confusion. > > Andrew Rowley > Black Hill Software > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
