Well, it started with IBM making a bad guess as to what ASA/USASA/ANSI would
pass as the 8-bit ASCII (which died on the vine). Then there was a plethora of
8-bit code pages loosely based on ASCII ("a maze of twisty passages, all
alike"). This is not just a mainframe issue.
Long term we'll all wind up on URF-8, and the old issues will be replaced by ne
ones. Meanewhile, file tagging is part of the interim solution.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of
Rick Troth [tro...@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 8, 2023 9:49 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Updated UNIX certification WAS: z/OS 3.1: Now UNIX® Certified
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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