Frank, As one example, consider text manipulation and reformatting. In the *ix worlds (including z/Linux), (g)awk and/or perl seem to be the languages of choice for searching and/or rearranging and/or selecting data from text files. z/OS Unix has at least a version of the awk utility that supports the POSIX version of the language, and I have used it myself quite often in off-the-cuff data analysis and formatting tasks for management reports. "awk" is one program you might indeed want to run in a batch JCL process.
BPXBATCH or one of its replacements (AOPBATCH, COZBATCH) is how you do that in JCL. Could JCL support z/OS Unix programs directly rather than via an interface program like BPXBATCH? Sure, SMOP. But not very likely to get IBM's attention or resources (ROI, don'cha know). Tools or system facilities that make programmers jobs easier but don't predictably result in a (larger) IBM profit are never very high on that scale. Could you use Rexx for these kinds of tasks? Sure you could, but sometimes the other languages let you do it with less person-time and effort because of the facilities that each offers that Rexx may not, or at least not as easily. I'm not trying to start a language flame war here, just providing an example from my own experience. Peter -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Frank Swarbrick Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2019 6:07 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: multi-line STDPARM shell script for BPXBATCH As someone who rarely uses BPXBATCH, and doesn't have an alternate program, I'm curious as to some of the major issues with BPXBATCH. Actually, I am curious to the need of BPXBATCH altogether. I ponder, occasionally, if JCL could be changed somehow to support a kind of EXEC statement that would allow for a lower case parameter that would be the name of, or path to, a USS program. But I don't have any idea what other requirements these "batch" programs fulfill. ________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of Kirk Wolf <k...@wolf-associates.com> Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2019 10:52 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> Subject: Re: multi-line STDPARM shell script for BPXBATCH On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 12:27 AM David Crayford <dcrayf...@gmail.com> wrote: > I have used COZBATCH for years but recently had a requirement to be > able to ship something similar so we could install a web application > from a PAX member using a batch job. > I wrote my own batch shell utility using a tip from Kirk Wolf. It was > very simple to implement, another reason why it's so disappointing > that BPXBATCH is so wretched. > > Anyway, we already had this conversation 10 years ago and it's not > worth dragging it up again. > > FWIW, it was much longer than that! We originally released COZBATCH > in 2007 as a free download (at that time named "DTLSPAWN"). We wrote it in a day after utter frustration with how much list traffic was posted *for years* on BPXBATCH issues. The mvs-oe list was almost completely dedicated to it. It has been enhanced with lots of little creature comforts over the years, but it is still about 1000 lines of code. Kirk Wolf Dovetailed Technologies https://dovetail.com/docs/cozbatch/intro.html#intro_features https://dovetail.com/support.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
