On Fri, 11 Dec 2020 12:32:10 -0800, Charles Mills wrote: >"Note that if stepnames are >not unique within the job, such as when the same procedure is executed multiple >times, results might be unpredictable; but in most cases, references to >non-unique >stepnames will resolve to the first occurrence of that stepname." > >Does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. > Reminds me of the several contributors here who insist that "//DD:name" is safe for UNIX utilities documented only as supporting "//data.set.name" because that's how fopen() works. Even for utilities not documented as relying on fopen().
>What is "might be unpredictable"? How is that different from "are >unpredictable"? > That just means that it's unpredictable whether it's unpredictable; not guaranteed to be unpredictable. I've argued here that the indolent developers should get to work and make any use of an "unpredictable" construct a JCL error. That has no impact on compatibility; an unexpected JCL error is covered by "unpredictable". Think robust programming. Peter R, with True Blue indolence, has rebutted that those unpredictable constructs are reserved for IBM internal use or for future extensions. I'm skeptical. I've long felt that responsible design should have required that the name fields on corresponding IF, THEN, ELSE, and ENDIF be identical, on pain of JCL error, for verifying correct conditional nesting. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
