On 3 Apr 2024, at 20:21, botongrui, aka τσ尘. via groups.io <botongrui@...> wrote:

I don't think MVS3.8J is ILE compatible, it's far older then LE Libraries

regards;

Rahim???

??

On Wednesday, April 3, 2024 at 10:42:41 AM CDT, Alejandro olivan Alvarez <alejandro.olivan.alvarez@...> wrote:

Hi guys.

I'm missing something again regarding our beloved MVT COBOL F compiler.. this time, I'm trying to get the system date and or time, but I'm missing miserably.
I've looked for the right syntax in my collection of vintage bitsavers cobol books but I do not find anythin in the 64' and 68/ OS/360 books I have.
As always, the 72' OS VS COBOL book seems the most plausible? to me... but i barely mentions the matter on page 401 for ACCEPT.

So, I'm trying this:

ACCEPT CD-CURRENT-DATE FROM DATE.

To which the compiler complains:

?

IKF3001I-E DATE NOT DEFINED. SYSTEM UNIT ASUMED.?

So I guess I maybe missing something on the JCL, or something on the syntax is different... does anyone knows how to get data and or time?

Thanks.
Cheers.
Alejandro.

?

Surprisingly, once I realized that I could simply let the destination file opened (from the execution of sort input procedure) and close it at the end of the sort output procedure, the program did what I wanted with a very nice looking set of code (early 70s style coding :-D)
It is fun to see that, as you say, cobol is simply spawning the SORT program on its own to perform the work, as the SORT program output gets printed as part of the job output.

Initially, I did the exercice with raw JCL / SORT invocation... but I required several steps, separating the headr records from the payload records into different temporary datasets, sort the payload dataset and, finally, merge them into a final one... and all that, without getting rid of duplicates (which was my initial motivation to switch to use SORT under COBOL, since MVT COBOL does not support the SUM stuff)
After reading the COBOL book from 72 about SORT (which was veeery brief, pheww, just a single example!), I learn that the in out procedures were in fact, meant, to do things similar to what I wanted to do.

The idea of tagging the header records is very clever!
The way I solved that is simply counting iterations, since I know how many records my headers consist on... however, it is an interesting ideo to handle 'variable size' headers in a future!

Regarding the software/companies you mention...well... I do not know anything about anything :-P

Cheers.
Alejandro.

On dj., de mar? 21, 2024 at 11:12, Alejandro olivan Alvarez

<alejandro.olivan.alvarez@...> wrote:

Thank you all guys for the points.

The thing is that, the code I was playing with, uses SORT together with its input and output procedures (nice feature!).
The goal was to let an input dataset full of records, including a set of header records, be sorted, with duplicated records suppressed, and write them to a member, all in one go if possible.
The strategy was to use the input procedure to bypass the header redcords from sort, and write them directly to output, and in the output procedure, simply check for duplicate records
before writing to file.

So, in my sort in procedure, I opened the output file, and write the header records directly, bypassing them being fed to sort, and, politely, close the file.
Then, on the output procedure from sort, I opened again the file, checked every passing, sorted, record, and write them to output file only if they're different from the last one. And, again, close the file.
Ideally, I would have been able to open in extend mode in the sort output procedure... but there I came with the issue that that's not possible.

Playing with the SHR in the JCL, gave interesting results:
If opening in SHR mode, the second OPENing makes existeing header records to be replaced. No surprise.
But If opening in OLD mode, while the header files are kept, as expected... only a few records are written afterwards, like if the job/step ended prematurely or something weird.

What I'm doing now is to open the output file on the sort input procedure, and let it open (which doesn't look polite in my eyes), then, let the sort output procedure close it.
Since there's only a single opening, it seems I can do all the output file writes in one go in SHR mode.

Cheers.
Alejandro
?

Hi folks.

So I'm trying to append records to an existing dataset with COBOL... wich should be quite straight forward: OPEN EXTEND MY-FILE

But it seems the compiler does not support that opening mode.
I took a look at the 1972 IBM book I use as a reference for the included compiler and, at OPEN clause, section (very brief one... so maybe not a comprehensive guide with not all options covered), I see that it only mentions INPUT and OUTPUT, no EXTEND whatsoever.
So while I believe that it is indeed possible, the thing is that there must be for sure a way to perform such a fundamental operation, even with this compiler.

As anyone a clue? Am I missing something?

Thanks you.
Cheers.
Alex.??

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