As to when are they hardened, it probably depends on usage. If you were to read a file, and use ASASYMBM yourself, then the answer would be that they're consistent for any given call to ASASYMBM and nothing beyond that. So consistency depends how much you pass in vs how much you save for a subsequent call.
I know that techniques have been discussed to help with consistency, such as (in JCL) defining another symbol whose value is the dynamic symbol, so that that symbol would not change value even if the dynamic symbol is re-evaluated. But, to be frank, I don't know if there is anything that avoids, (for example) if you substitute for time first and then date but at just the wrong time, winding up with hours/minutes/seconds of 23:59:59 and the date being "the next day". >I understand the reason for the extra spaces between the Time >and the Date; WAD. I still don't like the behavior. The JES team that implemented instream data set symbol substitution made the decision that it was more important when doing symbol substitution to preserve column alignment to the extent possible than to preserve the number of blanks separating one chunk from another. For your case that apparently is not true. The hope is that it is true more than it is not. Peter Relson z/OS Core Technology Design ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
