I wrote a dinky CLIST to issue WRITENR. I call it from REXX as needed. Bill Hitefield
> -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On > Behalf Of David Spiegel > Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2025 5:42 PM > To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU > Subject: Re: ISREDIT CAPS ON OFF > > Hi Tony, > CLISTs also have the WRITENR statement, which Rexx lacks. > > Regards,. > David > > On 2025-01-09 16:49, Tony Harminc wrote: > > On Wed, 8 Jan 2025 at 19:51, Lennie Bradshaw > > <lennie-brads...@outlook.com> > > wrote: > > > >> CLIST design is over 50 years old I think. > >> > > CLISTs as we know them arrived with OS VS/2 Release 3, so the second > > release of MVS around 1974 or so. Before that, on e.g MVT, SVS, and > > the first MVS, CLISTs had no control flow statements - they were just > > lists of commands with some substitution for arguments. > > > > At introduction, everyone was all excited at the shiny new CLISTs, and > > I remember well wondering why there was no lower case support, and if > > it could be easily fixed. Indeed it could, and I found and happily > > zapped out the upcasing and tried a CLIST with some lower case text in > > it. It blew up all over the place, and I discovered that pretty much > > all byte values beyond the upper case letters, numbers, and a few more > > (i.e. roughly the JCL character set at the time) was being used as > > internal syntactic markers for various aspects of the language. So much for > that quick fix. > > > > No, I don't remember the details, but I imagine much of today's CLIST > > processor is unchanged from the 1970s version, and the source code for > > that is available if anyone wants to research it further. > > > > But seriously, why does anyone use CLISTs today? There is to my > > knowledge just one reason: there is tight integration with TSO parsing > > and the CLIST header, whereas REXX requires that the command be > > treated as a single string, and then parsed with the (unarguably powerful) > REXX parsing scheme. > > But that doesn't allow for a syntax error to be discovered in the REXX > > and the user prompted using TSO facilities; the REXX has to do all the > > work itself. > > > > Tony H. > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send > > email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to > lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
