This "file tagging" is completely new for me. Please pardon my ignorance.
The behavior you describe (some utils honor the tag, others don't)
sounds perfectly typical, totally expected.
There *must* be a default, and that would predate the availability of a
"tag", so for apps to not "honor" a tag, even if painful, makes sense.
We're talking default: default behavior, default charset, etc.
When I first encountered USS, and experienced, "sure, it's Unix, but
it's not ASCII", there was a really really helpful indicator: newline.
There are two newline characters, and thankfully they're both in
unprintable space (no graphemes). So when a textual utility reads a text
line and hits 0x15, it can safely assume EBCDIC. The default codepage
for USS was said to be 1047. Others are fine, as long as we know they're
EBCDIC. If that same textual utility reads a text line and hits 0x0A, it
can safely assume ASCII (or superset like UTF-8). It would likely need
to take action, translate the line A to E, or ... something. (The
options are numerous.)
This, of course, has to be done within the application or utility. The
logic has been within our reach for thirty years, maybe more. I've
written applications which use it.
This doesn't help "text" without embedded newlines.
Of the mixed utilities you mention, some are exhibiting a default behavior.
If we want universal new behavior (to honor this newfangled "tagging"
feecher) then what's needed is an OS-level implementation.
Otherwise we have to re-code, in the source, thousands of utilities, not
to mention FLOSS, third party products, and end-user programs.
In other words, if file tagging is to have a consistent effect on ALL
applications, the operating system has to do the "honoring".
How did we get here?
-- R; <><
On 6/8/23 05:58, David Frenzel wrote:
Since the current email thread has evolved away from this announcement I felt
it would make sense to open a separate one.
I can see that z/OS 2.1 received the same certification back in 2013
(https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3601.htm).
Timothy, are you stating that z/OS 3.1 now has the same certification that 2.1
has or is this certification for 3.1 implying any changes as to how USS works
and whether anything has been improved from 2.x?
I just spent hours on an issue where it turned out that some utilities honor the file tag
for code pages while others simply ignore it and use some hard-coded value. I stopped
counting the endless hours of time wasted because some weird code page issue appeared in
USS. Hopefully, nobody is going to scream "POSIX compliance" at me now..
Cheers - David
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
Timothy Sipples
Sent: Freitag, 26. Mai 2023 14:03
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: z/OS 3.1: Now UNIX® Certified
z/OS 3.1 has already earned its UNIX® certification...
https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3693.htm
—————
Timothy Sipples
Senior Architect
Digital Assets, Industry Solutions, and Cybersecurity IBM zSystems/LinuxONE,
Asia-Pacific sipp...@sg.ibm.com
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