Does this count?

“There's just something obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince 
yourself otherwise.” 
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 4:21 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Emptiness (was: z/OS FTP client behavior)

On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 11:40:58 -0700, Richard Pinion wrote:

>First, I'm not in the TCP-L group.  Second this is a general question 
>regarding the behavior  of the z/OS FTP client. Third, I do not read 
>every IBM manual cover to cover and commit to memory.  In this case, I should 
>have done number three.
>
>We are running z/OS 1.13.  Executing the FTP client via a batch job, as shown 
>below.
>What results would you expect if XYZFILE1 were empty (SMS managed data 
>sets, so we would have a valid EOF), and the remaining data sets were not?
>
>0 bytes were transferred because the first data set in the 
>concatenation was empty.  Googling this example, yielded,
>
>Restrictions:
> ...
>To prevent transferring data from an empty file, FTP checks whether the first 
>file in a concatenation series is empty and allocates an empty data set. No 
>data is transferred.
>
(That appears in:
    
http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/zos/v2r1/topic/com.ibm.zos.v2r1.halu001ddname 
support with FTP
    z/OS Communications Server: IP User's Guide and Commands
    SC27-3662-00 )

But empirically I discover:

o If the first catenand is an empty instream data set, the remaining catenands 
are
  transmitted regardless.

o If the first catenand is an empty UNIX file, the remaining catenands are not 
transmitted.

o Otherwise, catenands following an empty catenand interior are transmitted.

Can anyone supply a rationale for these behaviors?  "To prevent transferring 
data from an empty file" does not count as a rationale.  Double credit if the 
"anyone" is an IBM employee.  Triple if not nearing retirement anyway.

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