Re: ISPF HILITE Question

[Frank Swarbrick]

Yes, the ISPF COBOL highlight is not up to date at the moment.  They got up to 
date a few releases back, but at least on my system they are not up to date 
with COBOL 6.3 and 6.4 at the least.

Not sure you need BYTE-LENGTH for this, though.  FUNCTION LENGTH() or LENGTH OF 
works just fine for ODO.

I recommend using the following to eliminate the need for the FUNCTION keyword. 
 And it will eliminate the "error" highlight you are seeing, since that keys of 
the FUNCTION keyword.

ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
CONFIGURATION SECTION.
REPOSITORY.
FUNCTION ALL INTRINSIC.

COMPUTE L = LENGTH(MYFIELD)

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  On Behalf Of 
Steve Thompson
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2023 2:20 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: ISPF HILITE Question

I have been chasing through a few IBM ISPF manuals and I am trying to figure 
out why, when HILITE is COBOL, certain words are "pink". Now I thought this was 
used to show a logic error, such as an "IF" with a missing "END-IF", or an 
extraneous "END-IF".

Where my curiosity/confusion is, is this:

COBOL has [intrinsic] FUNCTIONs. And I'm trying to make use of one, but it is 
getting colored pink. Could this be because ISPF doesn't know about new 
functions in COBOL? In this case it is "BYTE-LENGTH" (because I need to know at 
execution time what the size of the named label is -- "Depending on" is being 
used).

Could someone point me in the approximate correct direction?

Or have I stumbled on a situation where ISPF and COBOL 6.x are not in synch?

TIA,
Steve Thompson

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Re: ISPF HILITE Question

[Jon Butler]

As an enhancement to the HILITE command, it would be nice if the list of 
keywords for any given language could be edited to customize them for 
individual use.  

I use PL/I to edit SQL statements, and a few tweaks would be nice...lacking an 
SQL type, of course.

Cheers,

Jon.

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Re: ISPF HILITE Question

[Lionel B. Dyck]

Take a look at CBT Tape file 967 from Tom Conley - it is the CBT Usermod 
Collection for ISPF (aka CUCI) and supports many additional hilite languages 
and enhancements.


Lionel B. Dyck <><
Website: https://www.lbdsoftware.com
Github: https://github.com/lbdyck

“Worry more about your character than your reputation. Character is what you 
are, reputation merely what others think you are.”   - - - John Wooden

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  On Behalf Of Jon 
Butler
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2023 8:40 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: ISPF HILITE Question

As an enhancement to the HILITE command, it would be nice if the list of 
keywords for any given language could be edited to customize them for 
individual use.  

I use PL/I to edit SQL statements, and a few tweaks would be nice...lacking an 
SQL type, of course.

Cheers,

Jon.

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Re: ISPF HILITE Question

[Steve Thompson]

Thanks for that.

I just started experimenting with "functions" in COBOL 6.2 and 
saw those constructs, and just hadn't tried them yet.


Steve Thompson

On 5/19/2023 3:58 AM, Frank Swarbrick wrote:

Yes, the ISPF COBOL highlight is not up to date at the moment.  They got up to 
date a few releases back, but at least on my system they are not up to date 
with COBOL 6.3 and 6.4 at the least.

Not sure you need BYTE-LENGTH for this, though.  FUNCTION LENGTH() or LENGTH OF 
works just fine for ODO.

I recommend using the following to eliminate the need for the FUNCTION keyword.  And it 
will eliminate the "error" highlight you are seeing, since that keys of the 
FUNCTION keyword.

ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
CONFIGURATION SECTION.
REPOSITORY.
 FUNCTION ALL INTRINSIC.

COMPUTE L = LENGTH(MYFIELD)

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  On Behalf Of 
Steve Thompson
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2023 2:20 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: ISPF HILITE Question

I have been chasing through a few IBM ISPF manuals and I am trying to figure out why, when HILITE is COBOL, certain 
words are "pink". Now I thought this was used to show a logic error, such as an "IF" with a missing 
"END-IF", or an extraneous "END-IF".

Where my curiosity/confusion is, is this:

COBOL has [intrinsic] FUNCTIONs. And I'm trying to make use of one, but it is getting colored pink. 
Could this be because ISPF doesn't know about new functions in COBOL? In this case it is 
"BYTE-LENGTH" (because I need to know at execution time what the size of the named label 
is -- "Depending on" is being used).

Could someone point me in the approximate correct direction?

Or have I stumbled on a situation where ISPF and COBOL 6.x are not in synch?

TIA,
Steve Thompson

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Regards,
Steve Thompson
VS Strategies LLC
Westfield IN
972-983-9430 cell

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Re: Typo in "Summary of changes"?

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Thu, 18 May 2023 16:15:20 -0400, Phil Smith III wrote:
>
>) Did you mean the business where hitting ERASE EOF at the start of a 
> line marks the MDT so XEDIT thinks the line has been changed?  Yeah, that's 
> always been like that, and is a bit weird.
>
>Just curious-when does it bite you? 
>
It broke a macro  I wrote.  I don't recall details.  Went to SR.  WAD.
With a sympathetic aside from development that while they sympathized
they found XEDIT logic so convoluted that they feared that any
attempted repair might  cause worse collateral damage.

>...  this would only matter in CMS UPDATE mode.
>
I was once a minor contributor in a distributed shareware develomment
project (Charlotte).  Patches were submitted as CMS UPDATE.
I found XEDIT UPDATE inappropriate in that if I had second thoughts
and restored the previous content of a line, it appeared regardless in
the UPDATE as a replacement by an identical line.

I abandoned XEDIT UPDATE and resorted to ISRSUPC UPDCMS8
to produce my patches.

>... So I'm not challenging it being weird/irritating, just curious 
> when/how you even notice it! Maybe just if it's the ONLY thing you've done, 
> and then PQUIT says 
>DMSXSU577E File has been changed; type QQUIT to quit anyway?
>
I was trying to automate that in a macro on PF3.

And ISRSUPC UPDMVS8 requires that both OLD and NEW have valkd
line numbers.  UPDCMS8 requires only that OLD have valid numbers.
In my day job we produced some customer-facing HLASM code.  Some
coders had started using desktop editors which didn't maintain numbers.
I couldn't repair them with ISRSUPC UPDMVS8; IEBUPDTE because of
that restriction.  I could use ISRSUPC UPDCMS8; REXX filter; IEBUPDTE
in order not to break customer USERMODs.

IBM has the right solution, but NIH:
.

How about an RFE for SMP/E support?

-- 
gil


-- 
gil

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VTS and volume categories (Friday questions)

[Radoslaw Skorupka]

Volume categories (0001, 0002, and so on) are useful for library 
partitioning. Each SMS-plex can use it's own set of categories (00x1, 
00x2...).
Categorie are good to request big tape of small tape (JA, JK) or newer 
or older (JB, JC...).

However the last sentence was good for real tapes.
In VTS world we have virtual tapes and the max. volume size is 
determined in DATA CLASS construct - so one can have several sizes 
within category.


So, the question arises: what is a purpose to have multiple categories 
for one SMS-plex? Of course, there is no obligation to more than one 
scratch category, however what goal can be achieved by using more than one?

I see the only one: different scratch Expiration settings.

BTW: all the volumes and drives are emulated, but... are there any 
architectural limits (i.e. volume size) resulting from choice o CAT 00x1 
aka MEDIA1 vs 00x2, etc. ?


Rather obvious, but I want to ask: is there any reason to define more 
categories, that means for MEDIA3 and above?
In real tape world 3490E drive was completely incompatible with MEDIA3, 
4, etc.
And the VTS allows to insert only CST (MEDIA1) and ECCST (MEDIA2) 
virtual volumes.


--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland

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Are Banks Breaking Up With Mainframes? | Forbes

[Mark Regan]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesfinancecouncil/2023/03/31/are-banks-breaking-up-with-mainframes/?sh=acb458b6bccc
 

 &es_id=54716d118b

 

​Regards,

Mark Regan, K8MTR General, EN80tg
CTO1 USNR-Retired (1969-1991), 

RUENAAA/CNO WASHINGTON DC//OP-009QCP

Nationwide Insurance, Retired, 1986-2017
z/OS Network Systems Programmer (z NetView, z/OS Communications Server)
Email: marktre...@gmail.com  
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-t-regan

 

 


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Re: Are Banks Breaking Up With Mainframes? | Forbes

[Bill Johnson]

Monica Hovsepian is the Global Financial Services Lead at OpenText.
Opentext is the recent buyer of Microfocus who was sued by IBM for trying to 
reverse engineer IBM software.
It’s always a good idea to check who wrote the piece and whether they have a 
bias. (Or financial interest)


Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone


On Friday, May 19, 2023, 3:14 PM, Mark Regan  wrote:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesfinancecouncil/2023/03/31/are-banks-breaking-up-with-mainframes/?sh=acb458b6bccc
 

 &es_id=54716d118b

 

​Regards,

Mark Regan, K8MTR General, EN80tg
CTO1 USNR-Retired (1969-1991), 

RUENAAA/CNO WASHINGTON DC//OP-009QCP

Nationwide Insurance, Retired, 1986-2017
z/OS Network Systems Programmer (z NetView, z/OS Communications Server)
Email:    marktre...@gmail.com  
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-t-regan

 

 


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Re: Are Banks Breaking Up With Mainframes? | Forbes

[Radoslaw Skorupka]

Typical.
80% *wrote something*. That remains me "how many banks are using Windows 
NT". A lot. It was ~25 years ago. However they'd been using Windows NT 
...but not for core banking systems.
Now banks *consider* moving *some* workload to the cloud. Cloud? What 
does it mean? Just someone else's computer? Which one? Is it something 
generic and "platform agnostic" or just Windows?
I know few projects to move off the mainframe. Very successful. That 
means people engaged built new houses and cars. But after 10 years (!) 
mainframes are still running the business. They consume more MSU because 
of code crippling (to make it "compatible" with some wannabe-compiler). 
Yearly cost of the project is more than TCO of mainframe (HW+SW licenses 
+ S&S, etc.).


Well, time for my consideration. I'm going to consider moving from my 
bicycle to Rolls Royce Silver Spur.



Shortly and seriously: the article has zero information value.

--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland




W dniu 19.05.2023 o 21:13, Mark Regan pisze:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesfinancecouncil/2023/03/31/are-banks-breaking-up-with-mainframes/?sh=acb458b6bccc
 

 &es_id=54716d118b

  


​Regards,

Mark Regan, K8MTR General, EN80tg
CTO1 USNR-Retired (1969-1991),

RUENAAA/CNO WASHINGTON DC//OP-009QCP

Nationwide Insurance, Retired, 1986-2017
z/OS Network Systems Programmer (z NetView, z/OS Communications Server)
Email: marktre...@gmail.com 
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-t-regan


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Re: Documentation RCF entry and tracking proposal on idea portal - please read and vote

[Charles Mills]

@Ann, "was this page helpful?" completely misses the point.

#1, a page could be helpful and also wrong. How does a reader report "the page 
had a lot of helpful info on it but paragraph 3 is misleading"?

#2, "helpful" is way too low a bar. IBM-MAIN is "helpful" and it's free. Google 
is "helpful" and it's free. Your customers are paying millions of dollars to 
run their mission-critical workload on your products, products that you tout as 
the best in the world. Your users deserve a better level of documentation than 
"helpful." Your official documentation ought to be darned near perfect. If 
you're going to do feedback with a pop-up the questions ought to be "was this 
page perfect? And if not, how could we make it better?"

Charles

On Thu, 18 May 2023 21:02:50 +, Farley, Peter  
wrote:

>Thank you for that link Ann, but I quote from the page you sent:
>
>"You will not receive a direct response to your feedback."
>
>Why not?  Wouldn't a mechanism to engage in dialog about the documentation 
>error(s)/omission(s) be far more customer-friendly and responsive to customer 
>perceptions?
>
>Surely the volume of documentation suggestions/comments is not large enough 
>(even world-wide) for it to be cost-prohibitive for IBM to provide a dialog 
>mechanism of some kind and a team that responds in dialog with the customer, 
>even if it is only a simple message board.
>
>Peter
>
>-Original Message-
>From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  On Behalf Of 
>Ann DePaolo
>Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2023 4:51 PM
>To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Documentation RCF entry and tracking proposal on idea portal - 
>please read and vote
>
>Hello Peter,
>
>For information on how to leave feedback for IBM product documentation, visit: 
>https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/about?topic=how-provide-feedback__;!!Ebr-cpPeAnfNniQ8HSAI-g_K5b7VKg!MQTQaSBasGKRH1dMI40r-PHLzY7IKeOeAUqwQMNodxrx9x6Y09h-ASEYtfWkDUG8YCzmgwz8rrHe-_RD0w$
> .

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Re: Typo in "Summary of changes"?

[Phil Smith III]

Paul Gilmartin wrote, re

>>Just curious-when does it bite you?

>It broke a macro  I wrote.  I don't recall details.  Went to SR.  WAD.

>With a sympathetic aside from development that while they sympathized

>they found XEDIT logic so convoluted that they feared that any

>attempted repair might  cause worse collateral damage.

 

Tsk. Whoever said that is a piker-I've been in the bowels of XEDIT and it's 
quite good code. I'm 99.44% sure, in fact, that reversing that would be trivial 
to fix. The thing is, there are surely macros that depend on it, so it would 
need to be SETtable-but that's also easy. They just didn't wanna.

 

>>...  this would only matter in CMS UPDATE mode.

>I was once a minor contributor in a distributed shareware develomment

>project (Charlotte).  Patches were submitted as CMS UPDATE.

>I found XEDIT UPDATE inappropriate in that if I had second thoughts

>and restored the previous content of a line, it appeared regardless in

>the UPDATE as a replacement by an identical line.

 

Interesting. I *always* look at my update decks to understand all changes and 
would have just manually fixed that, then re-XEDITed and resaved to make sure 
sequence increments etc. were fine. Never had a problem. But if you had some 
sort of automation around it, that might be hard, I know.

 

>I abandoned XEDIT UPDATE and resorted to ISRSUPC UPDCMS8

>to produce my patches.

 

>... So I'm not challenging it being weird/irritating, just curious 
> when/how you even notice it! Maybe just if it's the ONLY thing you've done, 
> and then PQUIT says

>DMSXSU577E File has been changed; type QQUIT to quit anyway?

 

>I was trying to automate that in a macro on PF3.

 

Yeah, that makes sense.


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XEDUT vs. ISPF (was: Typo ...)

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Fri, 19 May 2023 18:32:57 -0400, Phil Smith III wrote:
>...
>>I was trying to automate that in a macro on PF3.
>
>Yeah, that makes sense.
>
I learned a smattering of ISPF before any XEDIT; the latter in the
era before PQUIT and QQIT intruded: the wrong solution.  But
I immediately longed for ISPF's smart END which did a Save only
when needed and left the timestamp unchanged otherwise.

And I was irritated by XEDIT's behavior of *always* scrolling to
center the target of a successful search, usually needlessly

And it was disappointing that the XEDIT-based *LIST menus always
ran in separate rings, never sharing with each other, PEEK, and
XEDIT.  They should have used ADDRESS XEDIT instead of CMS.

I wasted too much time scripting around such things, never
modifying IBM code, only using undocumented interfaces.
And it all went for naught when a major update broke them

-- 
gil

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Re: XEDUT vs. ISPF (was: Typo ...)

[Charles Mills]

XEDUT (was: Typo ...)

Muphry's Law?

CM

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Re: VTS and volume categories (Friday questions)

[Brian Fraser]

If different LPARs using the tape library have different TMCs, then they
must also have different category codes assigned so the correct tapes are
used for scratch mounts.


On Sat, 20 May 2023 at 02:43, Radoslaw Skorupka <
0471ebeac275-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:

> Volume categories (0001, 0002, and so on) are useful for library
> partitioning. Each SMS-plex can use it's own set of categories (00x1,
> 00x2...).
> Categorie are good to request big tape of small tape (JA, JK) or newer
> or older (JB, JC...).
> However the last sentence was good for real tapes.
> In VTS world we have virtual tapes and the max. volume size is
> determined in DATA CLASS construct - so one can have several sizes
> within category.
>
> So, the question arises: what is a purpose to have multiple categories
> for one SMS-plex? Of course, there is no obligation to more than one
> scratch category, however what goal can be achieved by using more than one?
> I see the only one: different scratch Expiration settings.
>
> BTW: all the volumes and drives are emulated, but... are there any
> architectural limits (i.e. volume size) resulting from choice o CAT 00x1
> aka MEDIA1 vs 00x2, etc. ?
>
> Rather obvious, but I want to ask: is there any reason to define more
> categories, that means for MEDIA3 and above?
> In real tape world 3490E drive was completely incompatible with MEDIA3,
> 4, etc.
> And the VTS allows to insert only CST (MEDIA1) and ECCST (MEDIA2)
> virtual volumes.
>
> --
> Radoslaw Skorupka
> Lodz, Poland
>
> --
> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
> send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
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