TSO command equivalents

[Shiva]

Most of you people, who are familiar with mainframes will be able to guess my question from the subject itself. For those who are not familiar with mainframes, here's a brief intro:

TSO is the environment where most of mainframe techies work. It is a place to view your datasets, allocate datasets (files, basically) and also do a lot more than that. Similar to a tacl command prompt, if I can say so.

But what TSO does better is,

* you can compare two data sets, without writing a program for it. Just a command. Type this command when you are viewing DATASETNAME_1 : COMP "DATASETNAME_2" - and it will show which and what lines are changed. More efficiently. You've to see it to believe it.

* find and replace. By row, by column. Delete mutilple rows, delete multiple columns. exclude a few lines just to view the important parts of a code, better.

* select few lines and copy, paste.

More importantly the compare command is what I miss in tacl. Is there equivalents to these and if there are any more two commands that you lot know, can you get me equivalents?

Yours sincerely,
A mainframe techie.

Note: I do understand that find & replace is present in TEDIT mode. But I'm talking about column wise, row wise find and replace. There's a thing called options in find & replace. But I've not analysed it enough to comment about it.
Also copy paste is like how we do in a word document, here. (nearly so)
I also do remember that region wise copy paste also works in tandem, I don't remember the exact command. I'll comment when I remember.

[wbreidbach]

TEDIT is a very powerful tool. Some things you could do with TSO (when I was working on a mainframe is was called ISPF) are not possible with TEDIT, like excluding lines from view and limiting replacements only on (not) excluded lines. But you can search for something and you the "when found" for typing in one or more commands. I think most people only use a little fraction of the capabilities of TEDIT.
Concerning comparing 2 files: There is a program available for the NonStop I already sent to some people. A predecessor of this program has been deveopled on a mainframe with PL/I. The actual program is written in TAL. And everybody interested can send me a mail with a real address to wolfgang breidbach gmail com (you know how to fill the gaps) and I wil send it including the sourcecode.

[Keith Dick]

For comparing Edit files, as far as I remember, there is no Guardian program that is an official product. There is an internal tool called QACOMP that does file comparison that has found its way to the outside world. It is unsupported, but has been working fine for many people for many years. If it is on your system, you would use it simply as:

qacomp old-file,new-file

The normal Unix diff program is available in the oss environment, so you should be able to do comparison of two Edit files with it. If your system has OSS and your userid can use OSS, I think this would work:

osh
diff /G/vol/subvol/oldfile /G/vol/subvol/newfile
exit

The osh command would switch to an OSS prompt. The /G/ lets you name a Guardian file from OSS. You use Unix notation for the filenames with / instead of . and you omit the $ from the volume name. I showed fully-qualified names. I am not very familiar with switching to OSS like that and don't know whether your Guardian default volume gets put into place on the OSS side when you use osh to switch like that. It also is possible to put the OSS command as an argument on the osh line, but the rules for that are a little complicated and sometimes if the user account is not set up right, that form doesn't work.

Once it became common to have PCs used as terminals for program development, not a lot of work was done on editors, file comparison tools, etc. There are a multitude of such tools available on the PC, and it is pretty easy to move files back and forth between the PC and the NonStop system, so most people just use the tools available on the PC.

I am completely unfamiliar with TSO, but some of the things you mention about editing are things EDIT can do. You can select lines by line numbers or ranges of line numbers. You can select lines by a string that appears on the lines or appears in a particular column of the lines. You can insert text in designated columns on lines or ranges of lines. And more. There is a manual that describes EDIT, named EDIT User's Guide and Reference Manual. The descriptions of the commands are not as clear as they might be. I seem to recall a different manual that was available in the past (many, many years ago) that did a better job of explaining the commands, but I do not see it in the manual set.

[wbreidbach]

The QACOMP program sound interesting, unfortunately I do not have it on my system. The program I created is able to compare type-101 files as well, it simply can use the linenumber as a sortcriteria, so it will find inserted, changed and deleted lines. I sometimes use this feature to compare 2 sourcecode versions. As stated before, feel free to contact me to get the program.

[Randall]

osh can be run non-interactively for this situation and you still get all the cool 'diff' compare options:

osh -c "diff /G/vol/subvol/oldfile /G/vol/subvol/newfile"

[Keith Dick]

Yes, that can work, as I did mention, but, as I also mentioned, that doesn't always work. I have encountered cases where a user got an error on the non-interactive form, but things worked fine with the interactive form. I recall the explanation involved something about how the attributes of the user were set, but don't recall any details.

[Shiva]

@wbreidbach: Hi! It is still called ISPF & TSO. Both points to the same thing still. But there's an in-depth explanation about it - which I almost forgot. Something about how TSO is a kind of an utility inside ISPF.

And about the following comment,

> like excluding lines from view and limiting replacements only on (not) excluded lines.

Good point that. Exactly what I was trying to convey. I miss those on the tandem TEDIT interface. But still I accept that each environment has its own perks.

And "when found" is much similar to the "C ALL" command on TSO.

> I think most people only use a little fraction of the capabilities of TEDIT.

Again spot on. Tandem is actually blessed with a lot of powerful utilities which are long forgotten by most people who use it on a day to day basis. Only a handful of people are really "well versed" in these systems. I hope that changes. That's why I'll be going through the manual @Keith has suggested for TEDIT.

And about that compare program which you've written, I'll mail you from my personal ID as soon as I finish typing this comment out. Thanks! :) Always good to see people willing to help, most often than not in this group. And as always I'm eager to learn. :)

And @wbreidbach, about the below comment you posted:

> to compare type-101 files as well, it simply can use the linenumber as a sortcriteria, so it will find inserted, changed and deleted lines.

101 files only? And also "line number as sort criteria", what does that mean? Also you mean to say that it will pin point the exact lines which are inserted/changed/deleted in the corresponding files compared?

I'm guessing that the reply mail you send along with your compare TAL program will have a note or something of that sort which will explain on this doubt. But still, I just wanted to ask.


@keith: Wow, you amaze me time and again. This "QACOMP", I'll give it a try. But going by what you've just said, I'm guessing it is not in my system. I'll let you know after I try. This just adds to the list I mentioned in an other post in this group. These missing files are just a matter of double standards!? Ah. One standard version, or one package for all - would make life so much easier. In any platform, but that can't be the case. I understand.

And this "OSH" command I'll give it a try. And since you've mentioned that it is depending on how the user account is set up, I'm not going to add this to the above worry list of things. Ha! Hope at least this works.

And yes, I understand your point on why a better editing tool was not in place.

And that TEDIT manual, keith, I'll look into it.

> I seem to recall a different manual that was available in the past (many, many years ago) that did a better job of explaining the commands, but I do not see it in the manual set.

This 'different' manual which you seem to recall, would you be kind enough to pass it on to me if ever you have the fortune to find it? "better job of explaining the commands", already feels good to even think of such a manual's existence, ha!

@Randall: Hey randall, "non interactively" - what does this mean? I'm guessing that it means accessing the osh side of tandem from the Guardian interface itself? Without fully switching over to OSS?

And what does OSH expand to?

And what does that "-c" command imply? It is not in the command that @Keith mentioned?

[Keith Dick]

Shiva wrote:
> @wbreidbach: Hi! It is still called ISPF & TSO. Both points to the same thing still. But there's an in-depth explanation about it - which I almost forgot. Something about how TSO is a kind of an utility inside ISPF.
>
> And about the following comment,
>
>
>>like excluding lines from view and limiting replacements only on (not) excluded lines.
>
>
> Good point that. Exactly what I was trying to convey. I miss those on the tandem TEDIT interface. But still I accept that each environment has its own perks.

EDIT can limit a CHANGE command to operate only on lines in or not in a range of lines given by line numbers or by a text string to match or not match. TEDIT might be able to do some of that -- I don't know because I never got into using TEDIT.

>
> And "when found" is much similar to the "C ALL" command on TSO.
>
>
>>I think most people only use a little fraction of the capabilities of TEDIT.
>
>
> Again spot on. Tandem is actually blessed with a lot of powerful utilities which are long forgotten by most people who use it on a day to day basis. Only a handful of people are really "well versed" in these systems. I hope that changes. That's why I'll be going through the manual @Keith has suggested for TEDIT.

I suggested a manual for EDIT, not for TEDIT. There is a manual for TEDIT, too, but that isn't what I was talking about earlier.

>
> And about that compare program which you've written, I'll mail you from my personal ID as soon as I finish typing this comment out. Thanks! :) Always good to see people willing to help, most often than not in this group. And as always I'm eager to learn. :)

The line numbers in Edit files are attached to the line and do not change when you add or delete other lines before them. When you renumber an Edit files, all the lines get new numbers, but not before. (The editor sometimes will do some renumbering automatically if it runs out of line numbers when inserting lines between existing lines, but unless forced to, it will not change the number of a line.)

I don't know what Wolfgang's program does, but it sounds like he makes the assumption that the new file has not been renumbered. So he can match the lines in the old and new file by line number rather than by searching for lines that contain the same text. I don't know why a sort would be required for that. A merge would seem more appropriate. I might be guessing wrong about what he means, but that is my quick guess.

[wbreidbach]

Just a little more about TSO and ISPF. TSO (time sharing option) is very old, it was already available on system /360, I started with it about 1974. It contained only some basic functionalities. ISPF was developed later on and is running within the TSO environment.

Just to avoid misunderstandings: My compare can compare any Guardian files. If you specify s sort criteria it can find records missing in one of the files. It is even able to compare files with different structures, let's say compare column 1-30 in file 1 to column 11-40 in the other file.
Type 101 files contain a unique linenumber within each line. EDIT and TEDIT usually do not change this number as long as there are not too many lines inserted. And this linenumber can be used as a sortcriteria to compare let's say the old and the new version of a program's sourcecode.
I will send you the file tomorrow, at the moment I am not in the office.

[Shiva]

Thanks keith for clearing those doubts.

Thanks @wbbreidbach - could you please send just the code? I can't transfer any pak files to my server. Sorry if I'm troubling you too much. I'd like to look at the code. :)

[wbreidbach]

Am Donnerstag, 6. Februar 2014 17:49:10 UTC+1 schrieb Shiva:
> Thanks keith for clearing those doubts.
>
>
>
> Thanks @wbbreidbach - could you please send just the code? I can't transfer any pak files to my server. Sorry if I'm troubling you too much. I'd like to look at the code. :)

Hi,

I can do that, but you can also visit http://193.65.99.19/kku/pak/pak3.html, you will find a JAVA version of UNPAK that runs on the PC.

[Shiva]

@wolfgang I've a mac. And I'm downloading the java version for it right now. Let you know once done. :)