Copying VBS file to VB file

Ed Goodman · Active Member Joined: 08 Jun 2011 Posts: 556 Location: USA

I have a VBS file created by the IMS BTS test tool. It is LRECL=4096, BLKSIZE=0, RECFM=VBS.

I have DFSORT step that copies this file to a VB file: LRECL=4096, BLKSIZE=0, RECFM=VB. I use SORT FIELDS=COPY

I have hit a weird problem when I have an actual spanned record. What I get out from the copy step is two output records for the spanned record. The record is split where the span occurs. The first part starts correctly, then truncates at the block boundry, then the next record picks up where the previous record ended.

I can't be certain if the BTS tools is really spanning the record in the "normal" way, it won't opn in ISPF, and my other tool is FileManager. It simply stops on the last non-spanned record. The split record, and everything behind it, is not showing at all.

Does this sound like a non-standard output from BTS? If not, is there an option or something to not split those records? Or maybe a more basic utility I should use?

Ed Goodman · Active Member Joined: 08 Jun 2011 Posts: 556 Location: USA

Update:
I wrote a COBOL program to read the file. Here's what I found.
The "good" records not being split have an RDW of decimal 0863 x'035F0000'
The first part of the split record has 0212 with a x'00D44000' (notice the '40')
The second part of the split record has 0651 with a x'028B8000' (notice the '80')

So I guess the split indicator is in the 'zz' part of the RDW's llzz.

I made my program read those bytes and combine the records accordingly. It seems to be working OK.

Frank Yaeger · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 4:11 am

Ed,

VBS records have an SDW instead of an RDW, as described here:

publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/zos/v1r11/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.zos.r11.idad400/d4363.htm

DFSORT knows how to process/combine properly written VBS segments to create complete VB records.

It appears the spanned records you are dealing with are NOT standard in terms of the flags used to indicate the segment type so DFSORT doesn't recognize them as spanned.

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 4:13 am

found somewhere in my sandbox

Ed Goodman · Active Member Joined: 08 Jun 2011 Posts: 556 Location: USA

Thanks.
I'm just going to use my new little COBOL program to translate this file. I found the chart that enrico displayed and that's what made me go look for the extra info in the other set of bytes.

Hopefully, I won't have any segments spanning more than two blocks, since I only know for certain what a "start" and "end" flag look like.

I guess I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.